


the tiger shark and the sun

by b_else



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Alternate Universe - Human, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Ensemble Cast, Everything Changed when Fire Lord Palpatine Attacked, F/F, F/M, Found Family, Frank Discussions on Imperialism, Gen, Jyn Is An Angsty Hot Mess, Luke & Leia Are the Avatar, M/M, Me Shoving Every Star Wars Lady and Minor Character Into This As Possible, Misogyny, Mutual Pining, Racism, Slow Burn, Well the Droids Are Animals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 41
Words: 205,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26811916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b_else/pseuds/b_else
Summary: Trust goes both ways.A dagger, spinning in her hand in the darkness. Somewhere, in the skies and seas as she had chased them endlessly.Oh, Jyn thought.It must have begun then…Star Wars/Avatar the Last Airbender fusion AU. The Fire Nation, under Fire Lord Palpatine and Lord Vader, has been at War with the world for the last twenty years. When Jyn Erso lands on his doorstep the day Cassian, last southern waterbender, is assigned to protect the Avatar, she seems just another obstacle in ending the War. An obstacle he would willingly remove. For exiled firebender Jyn, the Avatar is her last way home - and to her hostaged father, never mind her own conscience. But as their paths keep crossing, and the Avatar needs all help in saving the world, Jyn and Cassian find they are more alike than they ever thought possible.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso, Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus, Leia Organa/Han Solo, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 79
Kudos: 94





	1. Book One: Hope I

**Author's Note:**

> This idea was born out of love for two franchises I adore, fusing them into a story that retells Rogue One/the OT in a new way. And because I love parallels between Rebelcaptain and Zutara, my ATLA OTP. On the setting:  
> 1) in the ATLA world, individuals are able to control ("bend") one of the four elements through martial arts movements. A single individual, the Avatar, can bend all four elements, and continually reincarnates into a different Nation, following the cycle of Air -> Water -> Earth -> Fire.  
> 2) ATLA uses Asian/Inuit cultures as a basis for its fantasy world-building. Given Star Wars’ cast, here, the Water Tribes are Latin/Mesoamerican, the Earth Kingdom incorporates Asia/Polynesia and some West Asian/Eurasian, the Air Nomads represent different African cultures, and the Fire Nation has Greco-Roman elements with some Iceland thrown in. I've done my best on research, but always feel free to point out my mistakes!  
> 3) Spirits, tied to the natural world, exist, with dualistic natures and morals outside human understanding (i.e. "balance" isn't about exterminating evil, but correcting excessive chaos or excessive order).  
> 4) Everyone's ages are their A New Hope ages, with some exceptions (e.g. Han is in his early twenties).  
> 5) Finally, each story arc in ATLA is called a "Book", with this fic's first Book being "Hope" (after ANH). 
> 
> Alright, with that info dump out of the way, I hope everyone enjoys this story!

_Water. Earth. Fire. Air._

_It is a period of world War._

_The Avatar once kept balance between Water Tribes, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, and Air Nomads. But that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked._

_Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could have stopped their ruthless expansion. None have found him. The Fire Nation is nearing victory over the other nations' rebels and armies._

_Some people believe that the Avatar was never reborn into the Earth Kingdom, and the cycle is broken._

_But some have not lost hope…_

"You don't know what you're asking," Aunt Beru snapped, pointing an accusing finger at Biggs.

"He _has_ to know; the world can't wait -"

There was a shuffling, and in the cool darkness of the house, Luke saw Biggs pass something to Aunt Beru.

He paused, from where he was helping the newly escaped slaves out from the hidden rooms beneath the house. Carefully, Luke pressed himself against the threshold of the kitchen, trying to listen through the clay walls.

Biggs wasn't supposed to be here, shepherding the latest batch of slaves making their way through the Freedom Trail. Biggs had left months ago for the War front. His friend looked matured, and he had squeezed Luke more tightly than usual. There was a strange gleam of excitement in his eyes, but Uncle Owen had interrupted before Luke could get it out of him.

In fact, Luke was beginning to suspect that he was being deliberately kept away. He always helped out with the liberation efforts, ever since he had been old enough to understand his family's history, the mark of a slave brand, and the symbol of a White Sun. But this was getting to be ridiculous. Luke knew for a fact that the harvesting chores Aunt Beru had dropped on him weren't necessary. They had kept him from heading out to Toshe Station with Biggs to get food for the slaves' journey.

"Mr Skywalker?" Luke looked down from where he had been eavesdropping. One of the little girls, with two thick dark braids, was tugging on his trousers, tears in her eyes. Luke immediately squatted down to speak with her. Soon, he was bending shapes with the sand scattered about the house. Luke hated bending sand, but it was the only thing in the Tatooine desert about to earthbend. Still, the girl seemed charmed by it. She smiled at him as he helped her onto the sand-sailers.

Soon, the convoy of slaves coming from the Fire Nation work camps in Wohbani were boarded. They would cross the desert, to reach the green fields of the Western Earth Kingdom. For a brief, mad moment, he considered throwing himself on board as well. Biggs raised a hand, and the convoy swept away.

Luke watched them disappear into the blood red horizon. The sun was already half-set. In the distance was the faint impression of the Mos Eisley Oasis. Then, nothing.

He made his way down into the house. His polar bear dog Artoo was gnawing on some meat. Luke was glad that Artoo could grow a thinner coat, but he sometimes wished his father's old pet had been something more suitable to the desert. A scroll was sticking out of Aunt Beru's pocket. "Who's that for?" Luke asked, pouring himself some milk.

Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen looked at one another. "For Old Ben Kenobi. Biggs wanted you to pass it on."

Artoo raised his head at the conversation. He began to bark and yip, until Uncle Owen sent him a piercing glare. The dog quieted, but his bright blue eyes were fixed on them. "I can do that tomorrow morning after breakfast."

"Actually, I'll deliver the message," Uncle Owen said. "I need you working."

Luke frowned. "Alright. But I was thinking…"

"If this is about your idea to head out for Mon Cala for work, we're not talking about it tonight," Uncle Owen said sharply. Aunt Beru squeezed Luke's hand gently, but Luke pulled away.

They ate dinner in silence. Luke fell asleep to Artoo's unusual pacing around the room.

At sunrise the next day, they rose, first offering a prayer to the family graves. Luke's grandmother was buried there, and her husband. There were also two headstones for his parents. The graves were empty. His aunt and uncle always prayed for peace in the Spirit World that they had not found in life. Luke told them, dully, that he was well. Uncle Owen pursed his lips, but said nothing.

Luke called Artoo to eat as they headed inside. There was no answering yip. He walked towards the bedrooms. The door to his aunt and uncle's room had been thoroughly scratched up by some wild animal. The lock had been forced. Inside, the room had been ransacked.

Luke bolted up the steps. Running around the house, he came to the back entrance. It was also hanging open. In the distance, he thought he saw Artoo loping. The dog had run off, with the scroll most likely. Cursing, Luke ran to the sand-sailer, hurriedly unfastening the many ropes. He could hear his uncle and aunt clambering up the stairs and yelling.

Luke bended a wave of sand and took off after Artoo.

Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen's bodies were barely recognizable when he returned to the house, his father's old friend in tow. All joy – that his father had been a hero, strong and kind and a powerful bender, that his father would have wanted him to protect the Avatar with old Ben – died in his throat at the sight. Luke felt himself fall to the ground. The message from Alderaan, Avatar, the Chief's daughter… Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen, burnt and blackened.

"We have to go, Luke," Ben said, "There's nothing you could have done. They were looking for that message. You would have been killed as well."

Luke's voice sounded years away. "I have to bury them."

Ben opened his mouth to speak, but Luke interrupted him. "I have to bury them. They won't find their way to the Spirit World if I don't."

The old man frowned, but did not stop him. Luke's hand shook as he dropped into a lower stance, bending the sand away to form two pits. Then he lifted the blackened flesh that had been his only family and placed them inside. As the sand flowed back in, covering Beru and Owen's bodies, Luke asked his family to guide them into the Spirit World.

Ben placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Luke looked up at his weather-beaten face. "I want to go with you to Alderaan, and meet the Avatar."

And Ben smiled cryptically, and nodded.

It was sunrise when the message in old Fire Nation code came.

Cassian had risen in before the sunlight pooled across the glacier, and gone to wake Leia in the chief's house. Blearily-eyed, they'd eaten strips of tough seal jerky and seaweed as Leia braided her hair into twin buns. Cassian, as always, threw some food into the water as an offering to his family. Then he dragged Leia out past the edge of the village to practice their waterbending.

"Does he have to come too?" Leia yawned, pointing towards the black mongoose lizard, watching with pale, unblinking eyes. "He's creepy, looks hungry, and he's probably cold."

"Kay will manage," Cassian said. Kay gave a long-suffering huff, but assumed a more alert posture, scanning the horizon. Good.

"How did you get a Fire Nation beast, anyways?" Leia had removed a glove to bend a large orb of water.

Cassian bent the orb away from her, which distracted Leia from looking at his face. "Luck and determination."

Leia snorted. They engaged in a brief tug of war over the orb before Leia split it in half with a well-placed slice. "You've been keeping to your lessons. Well done."

Leia smiled at him. "I'm glad you're back."

So was Cassian. It was easy not to think in the near-blinding white of Alderaan. The mission had been too long. He'd extracted the information, and he'd gotten Kay. He was giving the Southern Tribe some hope that the raids would end and the War could be won. Someday.

Leia splashed his face with water. "Why yes Leia, I have missed you also."

Cassian rolled his eyes. The training devolved into a sloppy combat, before he set her to work on making ice daggers and discs. Cassian slid into the low stance of a water whip. Once again, the water refused to obey properly, splashing back into the ocean. Beside him, he heard Leia grunting in frustration. "How are you so good at these stupid things?"

His face slid very easily into a relaxed smile and his tone lightened. "Practice."

"Well, it'd be easier if the scrolls that survived had clearer instructions."

The weight of this statement hung between them for a few moments, before Cassian said, "Give it time."

In truth, Leia learnt at least five times more quickly than Cassian did. He had little frame of reference, but there was no doubt Leia was a waterbending prodigy. Her pale skin stood out amongst the olive to brown tones of the Water Tribesmen, but there were many pale as her in the Southern Isles between the shores of the Four Nations. After all, Avatar Mace Windu had been from there, and he had been as dark as the Air Nomads. Cassian had been only eleven when Leia's mother had brought her to Alderaan, a dark-haired woman with angry scars along her slim pale neck. And then it had been just them. Only two.

Sometimes Cassian wondered if his little sisters would have been benders too, if they had survived past early childhood. Would he have stood over them, coaxing Ysabel and Juana's pudgy fingers to form the careful shapes? Would his parents have said, _mijo_ , you've done well? Some were hopeful there would be more benders born, but Cassian was realistic. It might be lifetimes before enough children were born to counter what had been lost. They needed to win this War.

Behind him, Kay made a noise.

"Cassian, look," Leia said.

A messenger bird was flying over the horizon, a scroll tied to its back. Cassian knew every bird they used on sight. He had never seen this species before. It was a dull yellow colour, stark against the snow. They watched it grow larger and swoop towards the rookery. Then a Tribesmen emerged, running towards the Chief's house.

"What do you think that's about?" Leia said.

They received their answer several minutes later. Sheltay, one of the Chief's aides, was hurrying over to them. "Come with me," she said. Leia dropped the stream she'd been bending, but Sheltay shook her head. "Not you, Princess."

"Move closer to the town," Cassian said, seeing Leia scowl in annoyance. "Practice bending the snow."

Leia made a frustrated sound as Cassian signalled for Kay to remain by her side. Sheltay gave no explanation as they entered the Chief's house. Breha was seated on great wolf skin pelt in the meeting room, with her lover, Bail, beside her. A few other close tribespeople were there as well, including Breha's advisor, Visaiya, who wore matching bracelets with her Chief. Breha's attendant, Falena, practiced her ocarina quietly in the corner. Leia's hyper-anxious iguana parrot, Threepio, was also present, muttering nervously to himself. Cassian made a respectful gesture to Breha, before taking the only remaining spot.

"Before winter began, we sent a message to an old friend of Bail's in the Earth Kingdom at great risk," Breha said, "The Fire Nation has been plundering raw materials from its occupied territories at explosive rates. It does not bode well. This friend will be bringing…a very special person with him. He arrives in a matter of hours."

Cassian could hear his heart pounding in his ears. He nodded.

Breha smiled. "He apologizes for the lack of warning."

"Cassian, you have watched over Leia for fifteen years now, training her as best we are able," Bail continued, "I am asking you to remain by her side. Keep her safe. Many things are about to change."

"Of course," Cassian managed.

He was unsteady as he emerged from the house. Leia was standing outside, ankle deep in a snow pile. "Well?" she demanded, hands on her hips.

It had been nineteen years.

"The Avatar," Cassian said.

Jyn watched the glacier draw ever nearer. She fingered the kyber crystal around her neck, stroking its surface, worn smooth.

"Thirteen years," she murmured.

The white around them was blinding. There was nothing like this in the Fire Nation, but Jyn was not always certain of her memories. It had been five years since she had been on its shores.

"I still think," Bodhi said beside her, a tremor in his tone, "That this yet another wild chase. I mean, it was some guy that other guy saw in a bar!"

Jyn frowned at him. Her contact at Wohbani was trustworthy, or as trustworthy as starving farmers could be. "What choice do we have but to explore every rumour?"

"Well…anything else? Find the rebels?" Bodhi hazarded. He was fiddling with the googles on his head.

"Don't quote my father at me."

Bodhi met her sharpness with his own. "It's hard not to since he personally assigned me here."

Jyn sucked in a deep breath, allowing the heat of her inner fire to settle. Reining in her temper, she said, "You can tell him all about it when he's on the ship. Soon."

She didn't allow him time for a retort, heading towards the gathered crew. It would work. It had to work. Those horrible yellow eyes would have no choice.

Soon.

Cassian stood beside Leia as the Chief's inner circle awaited the arrival of their visitor. Kay was at his feet, looking peevish, while Threepio mumbled to himself on Leia's shoulder. A ship was approaching the glacier's edge. He ran through what he knew. This Avatar would have been born in Earth. They had been reincarnated sometime around when the Fire Nation began its Imperial ambitions, around Leia's age. Cassian sorely hoped the Avatar knew something of bending. They would need it.

When the ship glided to a halt in front of them, Leia gave a great snort. "They came in _that_?"

The ship was a ramshackle mess, pieced together from other crafts. Cassian could see Water Tribe sails, Earth Kingdom framework, even a Fire Nation engine bolted in. A pale skinned man with scruffy brown hair stepped off the deck, scowling at Leia's comment. His vest and pants were a dull Earth Kingdom brown. " _You're_ the Avatar?" Leia continued.

"I'm just a smuggler," the man said, eyeing Leia's heavily beaded and furred blue ponchos to keep warm, "Your Worship, is it?"

A pale-skinned old man, wrapped in a thick brown cloak stepped out from the ship. Beside him was a pale boy with sandy blond hair, in ratted Earth Kingdom colours. He looked around Leia's age. It was unusual colouring all around, Cassian thought, although there were those as pale as the Fire Nation on the coasts of the Earth Kingdom. There was also an extremely shaggy brown creature with the smuggler, that Cassian guessed was some kind of bear.

"That thing needs a haircut," Leia sneered.

The animal let out a roar. "You said it, Chewie," the smuggler said.

"Wait, you think _we_ have the Avatar?" the boy piped up. "We're here to meet the Avatar."

Before anyone could cut in, a large white polar bear dog bounded off the ship. Threepio began to squawk, repeating the words, "old friend! Old friend!" as he fluttered to land on the animal's head.

"I think," Breha said, softly but firmly, "We should head inside."

The air was thick with tension as they trooped towards the Chief's house. The old man whispered something to the smuggler. The man grunted, folding his arms as he and the bear stayed behind. A group of women skinning a tiger seal looked up and watched the strange procession.

Inside the house, Bail gestured for everyone to seat themselves around some cups of tea. Cassian was to Leia's right, while the boy sat to her left, followed by the old man. "Mum, dad, what is going on?" Leia demanded.

Breha raised her hand. In her pale blue furs, hair braided elaborately with bone beads, this was their Chief speaking. Leia sat back. Her hands fisted into her parka. "This is General Obi Wan Kenobi," Bail began.

"I wouldn't call myself a General anymore," Obi Wan demurred, sipping some of the labrador tea. Bail inclined his head warmly. Breha made the remaining introductions. She carefully did not remark on Cassian's intelligence position, merely referring to him as 'a waterbending student.' The boy was introduced as Luke Skywalker, and the polar bear dog as Artoo.

Leia sat very stiffly, tension radiating off her short frame.

"What do you know," Breha said, her soft eyes on her daughter's face, "About the Avatar cycle?"

When Leia said nothing, Breha continued, "Twins are something very special. A singular soul in two bodies. It has been over a thousand years since this has happened in the Avatar Cycle. The Fire Nation has never known this was the case this time around. It was what kept the Avatar safe, especially with the twins separated."

Nineteen years. The ease within which she learnt Waterbending. That her mother could be from the Southern Isles, nominally Earth Kingdom territory, or the coasts. The promise Bail had extracted to keep Leia safe.

Leia bolted out of the room, doubtlessly heading to her room. Luke had run out of the house, a look of acute horror on his face, Artoo on his heels. Obi Wan and Bail called after him to wait. Knowing that Leia was safe indoors, Cassian clicked his tongue for Kay to get up. "I'll retrieve the – one of the Avatars," he said.

He led Kay outside and swung himself onto his back. Kay bounded across the frozen tundra, tracking Artoo's progress. Luke had a head start on him, but mongoose lizards were built for speed. Cassian settled in as they left sight of the town. Cassian's mind was reeling. Leia – and Luke – was the Avatar. The last hope left in the world, the only thing that could aid the fledging rebel cells against the Fire Nation.

He knew now what he had agreed to. Now he had to find Leia's brother.

There, on the edge of the Fest glacier, stood a blonde figure. Below was the great black mass of the frozen Fire Nation ship. Its brutal form stood out against the ice like a wound.

"What is that?" Luke said, not moving at his approach.

"Fire Nation raiding ship. That one came when I was a child, when we still had a city all the way here," Cassian said.

He could not look at it for too long. Luke's gaze remained fixed. "What was it coming for?"

"Waterbenders. General terror."

"Are there…"

It sunk into Cassian then. Years of spying fought to keep his face impassive. "Only me," he said.

Luke continued to stare at the ship. "They killed my uncle and aunt. Right before we left for Alderaan. I thought – I don't know what I thought. They knew, all along."

There was nothing that could be said to that.

Then Luke asked, "Cassian, right? Does the Water Tribe have steam ships?"

He turned.

Out on the water was a black shape straight as an arrow, belching black smoke. It was headed towards the Tribe.

"No, no no no," Cassian said, wrenching Kay's harness, "Come on! We have to get back there now!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a writing tumblr [here](https://b-else-writes.tumblr.com/) where I post chapter updates and rants about writer's block/plot points.


	2. Book One: Hope II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obi Wan's dialogue explaining the Avatar state is taken directly from the ATLA TV show. I have placed asterisks * around these lines to indicate what does not belong to me.

They watched her with eyes like Saw's rebels.

The similarity was unnerving – the same flint-hard eyes, teeth bared in snarls, armed with clubs and spears – but it was not enough to stop Jyn from gut-punching the first one who tried to go after her. He doubled over in the snow from her excessive force. Jyn wasn't feeling particularly gentle. Really, she was trying to embody the glaciers around her, cold and distant.

The crew assembled behind her. It wasn't much, but most of them were firebenders. The Tribe watched them. Elderly and children dominated the group. Jyn set her jaw. Bodhi had elected to remain behind on the ship. I don't want to watch this, he had said.

Was one slimy contact at the Wohbani Port enough for this?

It did not matter. The only way now was forward. The bridges had been burnt for her.

"I'm here for the Avatar."

Nobody spoke. An older woman, wrapped in a dyed blue poncho lined with a great wolf-pelt, openly met her gaze. A taller man rested a hand on her elbow. The Chief and her lover. "A pale blond boy. Hand him over to me and we will leave. We do not wish you harm."

For a frail-looking woman, the Chief's voice struck like a whip. "There are none amongst us. Leave now, fire woman."

She thought her mother would have liked this place. The cold unforgiving wind cut at Jyn's face, and her eyes felt tight and painful. She stood out amongst this dusky-skinned tribe, pale-faced and wrapped in sharp black armour. She was everything they have come to fear.

It was on their backs where she will bring her father back to her.

Fire licked through her clenched fists. "I know you are hiding him."

"I'm right here."

A huge white dog bounded forward. Abreast him was a pale blond boy, on the cusp of adulthood. Beside him was a tribesman, riding a mongoose lizard. Later, Jyn would think of the man's eyes, blank as two silver coins, boring into her. His gaze stood out amongst all the others.

But right now, all Jyn, shivering and exhausted, could think was _he's real_.

_Oh look, it's Lyra, back from the dead. It's a miracle._

"Avatar," Jyn breathed, choking on her own hope.

He nodded. "If I go with you, will you spare the village? Will you never return?"

Jyn didn't point out that she had no intention of ever coming back. "You have my word."

The Avatar jumped down from the beast, whispering something to it. The Tribesman grabbed his cloak, hissing something urgently, but the Avatar pulled away, shaking his head. They glanced towards some of the houses and continued the frantic whispering. If Jyn had been clearer-headed, she would have noticed the pale face in one of the houses.

But all she could hear thundering in her blood was, _finally_.

At last, the Avatar stepped forward, allowing two crewmembers to escort him up the gangway. Bodhi was waiting, and his already large eyes grew enormous. "Is that…"

"Put the Avatar in the brig," Jyn told the crew. "Take stock of all our weaponry and available crew members. We set course to Coruscant."

"You should have fought them!" Leia said the moment Cassian pushed aside the furs over the door.

"The town would have been destroyed," Cassian said. "And then we would have starved to death in the winter."

The old man – Obi Wan – was beside her. Cassian suspected he was the one who had kept Leia inside. "He's right, young Avatar. To fight would have been reckless."

Leia rose to her feet abruptly. "We're going after them."

Breha closed her eyes, something like despair passing across her face. When she spoke, it was with her chief's voice. "Leia, Cassian, pack your bags and say your goodbyes. Someone, find that smuggler!"

In his tent, Cassian rolled up the hide and fur bedroll into a bundle. He carried most of his knives on his person. Taking the remaining, he strapped them to his belt and tucked them into his boots, along with several sharp picks. He slung his water skin on as well. What remained were a spare set of clothes, a few trinkets from his family, some eating implements, and small sewing kit he could use both for his clothes and any wounds. These he shoved into a leather bag. He took more care with the beaded bracelets his mother had worn, the whalebone penguin his father had carved for him, the tufts of hair belonging to his sisters, carefully wrapped.

Outside, Leia was furiously blinking back tears.

Cassian squeezed her shoulder, but she shrugged him off. Then Breha led them into the communal meeting house, a stepped pyramid of ice, with the altar to the spirits and ancestors. Cassian wasn't sure if he took much stock in the spirits, but there were so few of the tribe left. They had to keep these things alive.

The two bowed before the altar as Breha chanted the songs to bless their travels. Then she left them alone to say their individual prayers. Cassian tried to find something to say, but his mind was curiously blank. There only swirled – Avatar. The War. Learning the four elements.

And the Fire Nation woman. There had been something hungry in her eyes. Cassian did not think he would forget it.

"I'm scared," Leia said to him. He did not think he had seen her vulnerable since she was a child.

Cassian knew what he needed to say. "It will be okay. We're going to win."

Leia's jaw squared. It didn't matter if she believed him or not. He needed her ready for a fight. Her face was hard as they walked to the ocean. Obi Wan was negotiating with the smuggler, whom he introduced as Han Solo, with his odd bear Chewbacca. "What is he for?" Leia said snidely.

Han, who already looked especially sour, bit back. "Protecting the cargo, Princess."

Bail drew Cassian aside. "Send information back to me on anything you find during the journey," he said in a low voice, "Especially on any Fire Nation movement you discover, or rebel cells you meet. You are the best we have."

Cassian understood. Bail's face grew sadder. "Take care of yourself."

Then he and Breha embraced Leia, whispering sweet words of love and comfort. "Take care of my daughter," Bail said to Obi Wan, "Although I'm sure that she will soon be formidable enough to handle you, if she is not already." He nodded to Cassian. "As well as Cassian. He is the last southern waterbender."

The old man inclined his head, with an expression of deep sorrow. Though the Tribe lived communally, Cassian had never had anyone been told specifically to look after him. He watched as Breha and Bail pressed kisses to Leia's cheeks.

They stepped onto the ship, Cassian leading Kay and Artoo on board, who began inquisitively sniffing Chewbacca. Leia man-handled Threepio on board, who kept squawking, 'boats bad!' Solo pulled the ship away from shore, the ramshackle motor sputtering before it roared into life. The wind caught in the sails, and then the tribe was shrinking away.

Cassian had seen this before, so he headed to the bow. He saw now why they had taken the smuggler's boat: it would catch up with the steamship faster than their longboats. "Do you have a plan?" he asked Obi Wan.

"How good a waterbender are you?"

He grimaced, feeling a sudden rush of shame. "Not the best in combat."

"Then I assume Princess Leia is not much better?"

Cassian shook his head. "And no Earth for you to bend onboard."

"Hmm, yes. Right." The man rubbed his chin. "Do you carry any weapons on you?"

Cassian pulled two knives from his belt, handing one to Obi Wan, and the other to Leia, who had come up to join them. "Stay behind me," he told her, "Move quickly and don't give them a chance to bend."

"If we can even catch up with them," Leia said.

"The Falcon's the fastest ship sailing right now," Solo said. "And I'd better be getting paid double."

Ahead, Cassian saw the dot of the black steamship. The minutes ticked down. Then they were drawing close.

"We're going to have to bend to get on board," Cassian said.

Leia's face screwed up, but she nodded. The ship towered over them. Neither of them had ever bent on this scale. Spying necessitated small, deadly precision, and little showmanship.

Cassian could hear the steamship crunching through the ice floes. He could smell the salty brine of the ocean. He was the last Southern waterbender. He breathed, and _pulled_.

At first, nothing.

Then a great cliff of water emerged from the ocean, dragged by Cassian and Leia's hands. It slapped against the side of the ship. Cassian exhaled. The water froze with a hard crunch.

He ran up the ice, shaking his spinning head, only to have to narrowly dodge a blast of fire. Luke was grappling with the Fire Nation woman on the deck of the ship. Her dark hair had popped out of its bun, her teeth bared in a snarl. It was only Luke's greater height that was keeping her down. Beside them was, of all things, an Earth Kingdom man in a plain Fire Nation tunic and breeches. He was muttering to himself anxiously. Cassian blinked. Who was _that_ , and what was he doing on a ship of Fire Nation filth?

The distraction was enough for the Fire Nation woman to plant a hard kick in Luke's gut. He fell off her with a grunt, rolling towards the edge of the ship. She jumped to her feet, sending out a hard strike of fire. Luke's back hit the railing. Then he was out of sight, toppling into the freezing waters.

One splash. Two.

"Leia."

For a moment, no one moved.

Then the water exploded.

A water spout, taller than the ship. Within were two figures, back to back.

Their eyes glowed white.

The water smashed into the stern. The ship shuddered to a halt. Ice coated half the ship. Luke and Leia dropped to the deck, bending in smooth, perfect sync. A great torrent of water swirled around them, sinuous as a dragon. It swept across the firebender and man, throwing them off the side.

Cassian realized he was gaping.

As the glow faded, Luke and Leia shuddered, falling to their knees. Cassian pulled Leia to her feet, while Obi Wan did the same for Luke. "We need to get away from here, now."

He ignored Han's yelling about magic water, snapping at him to get the ship moving. As the Falcon arced around the steamship, he saw the firebender and the man clinging to the anchor. Her gaze followed their ship as they sailed away.

Once they were several miles away, Obi Wan sat the twins and Cassian down on the deck. "You went into the Avatar state," he explained, "*The Avatar State is a defence mechanism, designed to empower you with the skills and knowledge of all the past Avatars. The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body. In the Avatar State, you are at your most powerful, but you are also at your most vulnerable. If you are killed in the Avatar State, the reincarnation cycle will be broken and the Avatar will cease to exist.*"

"So, we really are the Avatar," Luke said softly. Leia was silent, but she was looking at Luke now with something like recognition.

"You are not yet fully realized. You will need training," Obi Wan continued, eyeing them thoughtfully. He rubbed his chin. "Traditionally, we would follow the Avatar Cycle, starting with your birth element. But your upbringing has been unusual – especially in regards to your training."

"Cassian has been teaching me waterbending," Leia said, a little defensively.

"And I can sandbend!"

"Brilliant, you two can just lure the Fire Lord and Lord Vader to the beach and throw wet sand at them, that'll really show them," Solo muttered from the wheel.

Obi Wan made the strangest choking noise. Red-eared, he said firmly, "Regardless, there is also Mr Andor to consider." "

I…" Obi Wan shook his head. "The Avatar will need masters who can follow on their journey. We do not have the choice to linger long in any location. They need a waterbending master, quickly."

Cassian looked at the map Obi Wan had unfurled. "Then we head to the North Pole, to the Northern tribe."

"Yeah, I'm only taking you all as far as Naboo," Solo said, coming up behind them. The bear trilled in argument. The group looked at one another. Then Cassian smiled affably. "The Northern tribe is a thousand times richer than the South. And we are carrying the Southern princess. The reward for ensuring the Avatar's safety will be beyond imagining."

"I can imagine pretty well."

Cassian's eyes grew harder. "Ten times the original promised."

Solo considered them. Then he said, smirking, "Deal. But we're still docking at Naboo for fuel and supplies."

The smuggler returned to the engine, where he could be heard arguing, of all things, with the bear. "I know it's risky Chewie but this will be enough to get Jabba off my back…"

Cassian tilted his head towards the sky. This was real now. He did not look back.

"So…" Leia drew out, "How did you escape anyways?"

"Well, see, there was this garbage chute…"

The missive from Galen Erso was the same as it was every month. He was well, working hard, and he missed her. Bodhi was always to transmit the same reply: Jyn was alive, in exile. They all knew who the missives were really for.

It glowed red in Jyn's hand. The ash fell between her fingers. She turned and stalked away from the communications room.

Bodhi took the brush and began to write the Fire Nation script.

_Jyn and I are alive, still in exile._

He frowned, chewing his lip. There was no one around in the room. He sucked in a ragged breath.

Then he penned out the rest of his message. Galen would not have forgotten the code.

 _I have hope_ , he wrote.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always appreciated!


	3. Book One: Hope III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three lines of Tarkin's dialogue are taken from Episode 3, Season/Book 1 of ATLA. Luke's "my sister has it too" is a paraphrase of that famous line from Return of the Jedi. You know the one. 
> 
> As a kid watching the Prequels, I always assumed the Mandalorians were Space Polynesians/Asians because of the Fetts. TCW really disappointed me as such, so for this fic, I've basically chucked out most of the TCW Mandalorian stuff (including a lot of the characters introduced). I've never watched Rebels, so I apologize if the characters from it I use are OOC.
> 
> Cloning and accelerated aging don't exist in this universe, so the clones look like regular attractive thirty-forty year olds, instead of elderly men.

The occupied Earth Kingdom coastal area, Lothal, was marshy and miserable. Jyn had heard the forested areas deeper teamed with animals of great beauty, but she had no desire to see them. The steamship ground to an unimpressive halt at the docks. The Avatars had cut a great gash through its front. It looked ragged and pathetic amongst the latest gleaming Fire Nation ships.

As Jyn stepped onto the dock in her dented and scuffed armour, she felt much the same. "We'll need the repairs done as quickly as possible," she told Bodhi, "The sooner we're out of here, the sooner we can get back on their trail."

"You mean…the Avatar?"

She whirled around. "Do you want every firebender around to know that they've been found? We have enough working against us as is!"

"My, my, could it be Jyn Erso?"

The cold, refined voice made her shudder. She turned, and inclined her head. Beside her, Bodhi was desperately schooling his features into a blank indifference. "Commander Tarkin, a pleasure to see you."

"It's Admiral Tarkin, now," he said, a smile on his thin lips. "And your…assistant. So nice of you to come to Lothal. You'll find its much improved now that we have finally quashed the rebel presence here."

Jyn subtly nudged Bodhi before he could blurt out that that had not been the rumour circulating. Tarkin's callousness was legendary. She gave as respectful a jerk of her head as she could. "That is quite a bit of damage your ship has sustained."

"Yes," Jyn said after a pause. "It is."

"*You must regale me with all the details*."

Bodhi was stiff as a board next to her. Through her teeth, Jyn said, "I'm afraid we're in quite a rush, Admiral."

The withered man only raised an amused brow. "Surely not. You're only the exiled daughter of a scientist. Who, as it happens, is under the purview of Director Krennic. Who would be my subordinate."

He began to walk towards the largest tent in the Fire Nation camp. "There is tea, Ms Erso."

"Jyn, we can't go in there!" Bodhi hissed. "He _knows_."

"That's impossible," she hissed back, squeezing her necklace, "We don't have a choice. Don't say anything. Just follow my lead."

When they entered the tent, there was a chair pulled up around the teapot and cups. A large world map hung on a screen, Fire Nation colonies and bases marked out. Jyn sat down in front of Tarkin. He had very obviously snubbed Bodhi. Tarkin gestured to the cups. "I hope it is to your liking. I confess ignorance to the Earth Kingdom palate."

Jyn bristled. She sucked in a deep breath, clamping down on her inner fire. Smiling brittlely, she took a cup and feigned a sip. Tarkin began to discuss the current Fire Nation movements, gesturing to the map. Jyn made non-committal sounds. What was Tarkin's angle? Patience was not her strongest suit. Jyn ground her teeth and waited. "*And by year's end, the Earth Kingdom shall fall under our rule. The Fire Lord will finally declare victory in this war*," Tarkin finished.

"That is quite ambitious," Jyn said.

"Is it?" Tarkin smiled. Jyn wanted to break his teeth in. "I've heard that your father may yet reach the height of his intellectual greatness…if everything should run as scheduled. It is quite wonderful that you remain alive to motivate him."

Jyn tasted bile in her throat. Krennic and Tarkin despised each other. She was just another playing piece in the Fire Nation's endless political machinations. Swallowing her tongue, she said, "The Fire Lord is just and merciful."

"Yes, isn't he," Tarkin said, swirling his tea. "How have you occupied yourself in these years?"

She smiled with all her teeth. "Tourism."

"Oh? Seen the Avatar on those travels?"

Jyn breathed slowly. _Never hesitate_ , Saw had always said. With practiced innocence, Jyn responded, "None. The Avatar cycle was broken when the Fire Lord slew the Avatar in single combat."

"That is the story, isn't it." Tarkin's cold eyes flitted over her face. "Only a desperate fool would believe otherwise."

Bodhi's gulp was audible in the stiflingly warm room. Jyn said nothing, jaw tense.

Tarkin leant back in his seat. "It must be quite difficult for you out there. *No home, no allies.* Only a worthless Earth Kingdom conscriptee for comfort."

"Don't you dare speak of him that way!" Fire burst from her hands in hot jets.

"Is that a challenge?" He gestured, almost bored, towards a guard standing at the door. "I myself am not a bender, but a fire duel can be arranged."

"Jyn…" Bodhi bit out warningly.

Jyn only glanced at the hapless guard, barely a few years older than herself. His frightened eyes. A cog in the machine. She focused on Tarkin's skull-like face. His smug superiority. Even now, an adult woman, they thought they had her pinned down. "I decline," Jyn said, letting the fire dissipate, "I humbly apologize for my anger, Admiral."

"Five years at sea has done little to temper that Erso disobedience," Tarkin said. He waved a hand to the guard. "You are dismissed, Ms Erso. I shall send along your good health to your father."

Rigid with anger, Jyn stomped out of the room, Bodhi following her. As she stepped out of the tent, she heard Tarkin say, "I do hope that you find what you're looking for…before anyone else does."

It took everything in her power not to blast Tarkin right then and there.

"Jyn, I…" Bodhi began, but she cut him off. "Don't say anything," she said softly, looking away from him, "Let's get back to the ship."

He obeyed, but he did purchase them some delicious Earth Kingdom black tea, which Jyn agreed was definitely better.

Leia watched as the green shore of Naboo grew closer. Her memories of Naboo were vague. She and her birth mother had been constantly moving, from Naboo's floating river villages and isolated mountains, to remote Earth Kingdom towns, even a frigid barren rock named Polis Massa. Leia's strongest memories were of soft, sad brown eyes, and the blue silk dress her mother had worn as the tribe had pushed her lifeless body into the sea. Her parents had explained her birth mother was wanted by the Fire Nation.

Now she saw why she had never been allowed to leave the South Pole.

In the quiet darkness of the hold, as they travelled here, she and Luke had spoken. Luke had been cagey on his childhood, revealing only that he had grown up in the Tatooine desert of the southern Earth Kingdom. But he could ramble at length about their birth father, Anakin Skywalker, a powerful bender murdered by Lord Vader, once a trusted friend of Obi Wan's. In turn, Leia talked about their birth mother. The stories her father had told her. The soft arc of her smile.

Luke looked nothing like Leia, spoke different tongues, bended another element. He had been burnt and blistered by a red-hot sun, while she had been moulded by ice and snow. And yet. This is my brother, she thought, my twin, a piece of myself.

"Our mother was from here?" Luke said, as they slid into the harbour. The Earth Kingdom island of Naboo was occupied by the Fire Nation. They had all thrown cloaks over themselves, aside from Obi Wan, who seemingly refused to remove his tattered brown cloak. "It's so green."

"It can get pretty cold in the mountains and further south," Leia said, "But no deserts like Tatooine."

"And good for that!" Luke hopped off the boat. Leia laughed at the petulant tone, joining him.

"We'll need food and fuel," Cassian said, "Solo, I'm sorry, Solo _and_ Chewbacca, will purchase the fuel. Luke, Leia, General Kenobi, purchase the food. Stay near the harbour. Don't go too far into Theed."

Leia frowned. "And what are you doing?"

"Finding out what rumours have spread about us." Cassian melted away into the crowd.

"I hate it when he gets like that," Leia muttered.

"You two really had no money?" Leia said, as they dumped the food onto the ship.

"Ben was living in a cave," Luke said, pulling out a hunk of raw meat he'd purchased. Artoo gobbled it up happily.

"It wasn't a cave, just a humble accommodation," Obi Wan said.

"In a cave, in the middle of nowhere," Luke whispered to Leia. Obi Wan gave a look of acute betrayal.

Leia pulled out her purse and began counting. "Well, we're going to have to make the money stretch."

Faster than Leia expected, Obi Wan had plucked a coin out. "Yes. Now I'll be heading to find a tea shop."

He was already walking away. "What are you going there for?"

"Information."

"That old desert wizard is mooching off us," Leia grumbled. Without knowing what to do – Han and Chewbacca were still off getting the fuel – Luke and Leia began to wander. They passed through the market, trying to walk unobtrusively whenever a squad of Fire Nation soldiers walked through. The occupation of Naboo was less brutal than Leia expected, but she recalled in her political lessons that it was a favoured territory of the Fire Lord. There were still many colourful stalls open, from where they had purchased dried figs and apricots, dried anchovies and sardines, lentils and nuts, and big bag of rice. Despite that, she had seen the hungry way the sellers looked at the coins in her hands. The tension whenever a squad passed or asked to inspect the merchandise. The large draped symbols of the Fire Nation everywhere you turned.

Still, much of the beauty of Naboo had been preserved. They walked until they reached a clear crystalline river. In the distance was the great cream domed structures of a palace, shapes only an earthbender could have formed.

"What's that?"

"Luke, wait!"

He was already jogging towards a white marble structure deep in the grass of the river bank. Scowling, Leia followed after him, glad that she had chosen to wear a tunic-dress with split skirts rather than her heavy formal wear. There was a life-sized statue of a woman, dressed in grand headdress and heavy robes. On the weathered white marble was a plaque. Threepio gave a nervous trill. "Is it a temple?"

"It's a tomb," Leia breathed, "Padmé Amidala Naberrie. It's Mother's tomb. But she's not…"

Luke had given the door a mighty push, and it swung open. "Someone's been here before," Luke said.

They stepped inside. In front of them was a marble sarcophagus, which seemed to have been pushed open. From where they were standing, Leia could not see what was inside. Behind it was stained glass window depicting a brunette woman in an elaborate headdress. "Look, there are footprints in the dust," Luke pointed.

Leia stepped forward, touching some of the decorative pots of flowers scattered around the room. "Firebender," she said, "Some of these flowers were torched."

"What would a firebender want with Mother?"

"Maker, maker," Threepio squawked, but she ignored him.

"She was a Queen once," Leia said slowly, moving closer to the sarcophagus, "She had enemies."

"Seems kind of cowardly to me to wait until she was dead." Luke looked at the stained glass. "She looks like you."

"Mistress Padmé," Threepio chattered reverently. She stroked his golden feathers, knowing her pet missed his first owner.

Now Leia looked. She had no portraits of her birth mother, and time had blurred and softened her impressions of her face. Sometimes she even felt like she was remembering a second face, eerily similar to Padmé's. This face was serene, and gentle. Her hands were folded delicately. Leia thought of the woman who had carried a baby across seas and oceans, who had braved the dangerous polar waters to take her child to the only safe haven she knew. _We're going to play the hiding game, my angel. Can you stay here and stay quiet? Can you do that for me?_

"They didn't get her right. Mother was…she was beautiful, and soft and sweet, but she was… she was more than that. She would've killed for me. She deserved more than…all this."

Luke was quiet. Then he said, "My aunt was like that. My uncle too."

Leia reached up and placed a hand on his shoulder. Luke turned his face away, biting his lip. Then he walked over to the sarcophagus. "Who opened this…" his voice fell away.

The decaying corpse inside was horribly burnt. Someone had burned her throat and across her face. The skin was melted horribly and Leia wanted to retch. "Luke, Luke let's get out of here," she said insistently, tugging on his sleeve.

His body was trembling violently.

Leia pulled him around. His eyes were glowing white. "Luke no!" She felt the rage tug at her, pulling at their connection. Screaming, Leia resisted, trying to force the Avatar State away. Her head howled with pain as she fought desperately to remain herself. She could feel her vision shifting into the strange double-sight of her and her twin. Threepio took flight in a flurry of startled feathers. "Luke, stop! That's not her!"

The tomb was shaking. The ornamental vases shattered.

"Luke, that's not our Mother! That's someone else!"

The tomb shook even harder. Bits of stone were detaching themselves from the wall. Someone grabbed her shoulder. It was a guard. "Not again," she cried, levelling a bow and arrow at Luke. "For Padmé."

Leia seized the woman's arm. "Get out of here! I'll handle it!"

"I cannot allow Padmé's final resting place -"

"I said, get out of here!" Leia's eyes were stuttering between white and brown.

The woman flinched backwards. "Avatar."

Leia practically threw Threepio at the woman, shoving her out of the door. It was taking all her willpower to remain present as Leia, and not the Avatar. She fought her way through the hailstorm of stone towards Luke. "Uncle Owen," Luke said, "Aunt Beru."

In a flash of clarity, Leia understood. Through her scream-torn throat, she made to speak. "I know what you're feeling! Mother died when I was four! I had to watch the ocean swallow her! The Fire Nation destroyed my people and our city… I used to walk out to the glacier, hoping it was still there… But winter had already taken it all away! I could never get it back."

Luke shifted, looking at her now. Leia tasted blood in her mouth. "All this time I thought it was my fault, because I was a waterbender…and now I know Mother was protecting me – but people are going to make choices out of your control, Luke! The choices of others are not your fault!"

He shuddered.

She was losing. Leia felt a blood vessel burst in her nose. No. She was the Avatar too, and she was Padmé, and Breha, and Bail's child.

Leia seized Luke's hand. "And we can make this right – you and I, together! We can make what they did worth something!"

Snap. They fell to the floor together, gasping. When Luke looked at her, his eyes were blue. "Leia…" he breathed. "You should've run…"

"You're my brother," she said, and she knew him. She had always known him. There was a part of her that had always been dreaming of a desert sun.

Luke smiled at her. "Obi Wan said my father was a powerful bender. That I am too. And now I know…my sister has that power too."

Leia pulled him to his feet, and smiled back. Then she pushed the sarcophagus shut. Whoever the woman was, she deserved better than that. "How did Mother actually die?" Luke asked as they walked into the bright sun. Threepio immediately fluttered onto Leia's shoulder, and began fussing over her bloody nose.

"Cut it out, Threepio, I'm fine," Leia groused, though she gave Luke a sharp poke in the ribs. Luke ran a guilty hand through his hair. "Dad said her pregnancy had been very difficult. Her health was bad after it. And… there were these horrible burns around her throat. Like handprints."

Luke frowned.

The guard outside bowed to them, staring with an expression of wonder. "I heard you in the tomb… Lady Padmé's children… Young Avatars, I apologize for the confusion. After Lord Vader desecrated the mausoleum, we have been quick to harm without asking questions," she explained.

"Vader was here?" Everyone knew of the Fire Lord's right-hand dog, a towering figure in black armour. The black charred forests of the Earth Kingdom were proof of his cruelty. Leia imagined the monster staring down at Padmé's grave, knowing he had extinguished her husband.

"Yes, my lady," the guard said, her eyes darkening. "He killed many of our rebels."

The twins exchanged a look. "What is your name?" Leia asked.

"Moteé, my lady," she said, smiling beneath her hood, a blue so dark it was almost indigo. "I served your Mother during the waning years of Peace."

"And you're a rebel now," Leia said. "

I was a rebel long before this War began," Moteé said with a smile, "Lady Padmé had strong feelings on the many injustices in this world – and so do I."

"We need to go now! There's a squad coming!"

Cassian was running towards them.

Leia turned to Moteé. "Please, tell the rebels on Naboo…" she looked at Luke, and together they clasped their hands together. "Tell them, the Avatar has returned."

"I will. Take this," Moteé said, unclasping an amulet from her neck. "It's a symbol of the sisterhood those who served her shared. I have not seen many of them in years, but I know they are still out there! They will help you, my lady, they will."

"There was another woman," Leia said frantically, "With Mother. I think."

"Sabé," Moteé breathed, "It must have been her."

Suddenly, the woman embraced her. Her eyes were glassy. "Thank you, my lady. You have given me something beautiful. You have given me hope."

Then Cassian was tugging her and Luke towards the harbour. Leia thrust the amulet into her pocket. She saw Moteé pull her hood further down, shouldering her quiver. She melted away into the brush.

If Cassian noticed a difference in the twins, he didn't comment on it. But Obi Wan smiled knowingly as they hurried onto the ship. Han started the engine, grumbling.

As Naboo disappeared into the distance, Leia held up the amulet to the light. It was beautiful pair of silver wings. Luke joined her. "Tomorrow," Leia said, "I'll show you how to waterbend."

"You have my prayers, kid," Han said. Leia glared at him, but Luke only laughed. Leia had a good feeling about this, as the Falcon headed North.

“UNAGI!” Solo yelled. The giant eel rose up over their small ship, hissing.

“I thought you said you knew these waters!” Leia yelled back.

“I’m not always lucky, your Worship!”

“Don’t call me that!”

If this was really how he was going to die, Cassian desperately wanted the giant eel to just get it over with already.

They were four days out from Naboo, rounding towards the coast of the Earth Kingdom. Luke had not shown the same attraction to water as Leia had during their lessons on the Falcon. Yet, when he had encouraged the twins to work together in creating a wave, they had shown tremendous improvement. Perhaps the point was for them to work as unit, rather than as a tag-team.

A unit that was useless against the giant eel.

Luke tried to bend a wave out at the Unagi. A small, pathetic splash of water moved. “Don’t look, feel,” Obi Wan said, unnaturally calm at their impending doom.

“Well it’s hard not to look!” Luke snapped. Leia tried to grab her brother’s sleeve to try together, but Luke wasn’t paying attention.

The Unagi blasted the Falcon with a powerful jet of water, shredding the sails. Yelling at Chewbacca to pull the sails down, Solo swerved the ship. “Bad odds, bad odds!” Threepio squawked.

“Someone shut that bird up!” Solo yelled as they raced towards the only available shore: the island directly ahead.

“It’s gaining!” Luke shouted.

Artoo gave a fierce bark as the Unagi surged forward. The eel reared back, alarmed. The extra minute gave the Falcon time to skid onto the beach.

Breathing hard, they watched the Unagi sink back into the sea. Solo began to curse, as Chewbacca tugged the sails down with his teeth. “Where are we?” Luke asked, giving Artoo a thankful scratch. Cassian unfurled their map.

“We’re on Mandalore,” Obi Wan said, without even glancing at it, “An independent Earth Kingdom state, and a major player during the Separatist Wars.”

“You’ve been here before?”

“As a younger man.” Obi Wan had hopped fluidly over the side of the Falcon. The lines of his face seemed harsher. “Much has changed. We should leave quickly before we are discovered.”

Cassian pulled the sewing kit out of his pack and grabbed one of the sails. “Are you sewing?” Solo asked, dumbfounded. Luke dropped down next to Cassian and accepted one of the thick bone needles.

“I can do this better than waterbending,” Luke muttered to himself, blond fringe hanging over his eyes.

“Are you _sewing_?”

“What do you do when your sails get damaged?” Leia snapped, joining Cassian and Luke.

“Steal new ones.”

Leia snorted, as the trio began working. “So _that’s_ how they do it in the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe.”

Leia shot to her feet before Cassian could unravel that statement. “Listen here, you pig-”

“Who do you all think you are?”

Before them stood several heavily armoured individuals. None of their faces were visible under their squarish helmets, with only a thin slit cut for the eyes. At their front stood an individual in brightly painted armour, holding a blade of pure black obsidian. Every other individual was armed with a bow and arrow.

Bad odds, Cassian thought. He might get two ice daggers in, but the arrows would kill Luke and Leia instantly. Could he count on Obi Wan’s skills? The old man was simply watching the squadron, eyes narrowed.

“Listen, _lady_ ,” Solo said, “We were shipwrecked on your island, we’ll be on our way in-”

The tip of the dark sword was brought up to Solo’s throat. The smuggler froze, hands in the air. “Easy there,” he said.

" _Listen_ , nerf-herder, all ships go strictly through the harbour,” the woman – the teenager? – said, “Who are you?”

“We’re the Avatar,” Luke and Leia said at once, “Both of us,” Leia added, “We’re twins.”

The woman lowered the sword just a fraction. “Prove it.”

The twins exchanged a glance. “Well, we can’t exactly…”

“Why not?” Now Cassian was certain the woman was much younger than he thought she was.

“We aren’t trained,” Luke said.

The woman put a hand on her hip. “So, what you’re telling me, is that we have to take you at your word?”

Her guard is down, Cassian thought, I could probably tackle her and-

“Don’t even twitch, water boy,” the woman said, not even looking at him. Solo’s eyes widened. “The Unagi will eat well tonight.”

As the Mandalorians stepped forward to apprehend them, Obi Wan raised a hand. _“Alor,_ might an old man have a final request before his execution?”

The woman seemed to consider it, before she nodded, sheathing her sword. “Of course.”

“I would like to play a game of Dejarik,” Obi Wan said, as Cassian, the twins, pets, and Solo gaped at him, “With that gentleman over there.”

He gestured to one of the Mandalorians, whose faded silvery-white armour was accented with blue. If a helmeted man could look confused, this one did. He and the woman exchanged words in a language Cassian did not know, before he stepped forward and nodded. “I have a board in my traveling pack,” Obi Wan continued. The woman made a gesture, and one of the Mandalorians was sent to retrieve it. When it was found, Obi Wan carefully unfolded the wooden board, and placed it on the ground. He removed the tiles, each beautifully carved. It was a relic of a bygone time, when there was money and markets for things of beauty. “I myself favour the Jedi tile.”

The Mandalorian spoke now. “There aren’t many that still cling to the ancient ways.”

“Those who do can always find a friend.”

“He’s lost it,” Solo whispered.

They began placing tiles down on the board, faster than Cassian was sure Dejarik was meant to be played. Cassian edged closer, trying to get a proper look at the pattern they were creating. The old man’s thick cloaked form was blocking it.

Mandalorian and General sat back. Then the Mandalorian began to laugh. He reached up and removed his helmet, revealing a brown-skinned man with close cropped blond hair, perhaps in his early forties. “General Kenobi, it’s been a long time,” he said, as the two men embraced.

“Commander Rex,” Obi Wan said warmly. “Sorry about not recognizing you. I have to say General, you’ve gotten _old_.”

Obi Wan huffed. “I’ve been living in a desert for nineteen years, Rex!”

The man had a hard face, Cassian thought, that had once been disinclined to smiling, but was beginning to develop new laughter lines. This Rex looked over now at Luke and Leia. “And they are…” Obi Wan nodded. “And they are…” Obi Wan again nodded.

The man inclined his head respectfully to the twins, growing serious. “I served your father in the waning years of peace. He was a good man.”

Luke’s face lit up at that. Leia only nodded. Rex and the woman conversed before she too removed her helmet. She had tan skin and bright, golden eyes. Her hair was a dyed bright purple colour, and she looked only a few years younger than him. “My name is Sabine Wren,” she said, “You could say that I’m running what’s left of Mandalore right now. Please, there is food and materials for you to repair your ship here.”

Cassian still didn’t like being in a location he knew very little about, but Obi Wan seemed completely calm. He reluctantly followed.

Mandalore’s main settlement comprised of wooden long houses arrayed in a well-protected clearing. They were sturdy-looking, with simple but clean carvings across doorways, windows, and screens. Nothing seemed to have been built through bending. Leia wondered if perhaps benders were an anomaly on the island, given their clear preference for armour and weaponry. She could hear the clangs of hammer on metal from a large wooden house.

Many of the buildings were quiet, and she saw few others out, all dressed in the same metal armour strapped over a simple black shirt, and trousers, woven from some kind of plant fibre. Sabine led them and Rex to one of the houses. The sun was setting outside. The days were growing shorter as winter fell upon them. In the centre of the home was an iron communal hearth carved with fishes, to the group’s palpable relief. Leia and Cassian had their parkas, but she could see that Luke and Obi Wan were not the best prepared for the temperatures. Han could rot for all she cared. Sabine offered the three long coats of heavily woven cotton, which they gratefully accepted. There were multiple bows and quivers of arrows hung to the wall, from small compact ones to a great longbow. Leia could also see a whetstone, and wooden cases of personal artefacts. From the numerous paintings hanging, Leia guessed this was Sabine’s home.

They were offered bowls of hot seaweed broth and fern shoots, paired with salted fish. It was the first hot meal they’d had in a week. Leia hoped that they were not pilfering the woman’s winter stocks. She showed Luke how to pick the fish apart with his fingers and avoid the bones, which he copied with some hesitation. Rex and Obi Wan were mainly the ones talking. The conversation washed over Leia, barely absorbing. It occurred to her then how exhausted she was: she was still not used to sleeping on board a ship.

Still, she tried to run through what she knew of Mandalore, but came up short. Truthfully, she had mainly been educated on the Fire Nation and the Southern Isles, their current enemies and their trading partners. She felt a sudden embarrassment in her isolation.

When they were finished, Rex offered for the men to stay in his home, though it would be a tight squeeze with his brothers, while Sabine offered her own to Leia. Cassian frowned at this, but Obi Wan led him out. Sabine laid out two sleeping mats next to the hearth. Leia shucked off her boots, gloves, and parka, and snuggled beneath the mountain of thick cotton blankets. Sabine’s proximity to her was comforting. It reminded her of sleep at the South Pole, where she and her parents slept side by side for warmth, or the whole Tribe together during winter blizzards. Threepio burrowed himself at her feet.

She was out before her head touched the ground.

The sound of footsteps roused her in the early morning. It was still dark out, but Leia guessed it was already six. She lifted herself up and stretched, seeing Sabine moving around the house. “Do you want to rinse off?” Sabine asked, “You’ve got a lot of dirt and…dried blood on you?”

Leia nodded.

Behind a screen door was a small bathing area. Another hearth heated a small bucket of water. The two women stripped down. Leia had never bathed or showered in this manner before. It was too cold in the Pole, and washing was done with a damp cloth instead, or in steam lodges when they had still traded timber with the other Nations. She copied Sabine and found she liked it. They used two wooden ladles to scoop the hot water onto their skin. Leia watched with relief as she scrubbed the grime from the soft brown hair of her legs. “Here, let me help you untangle your hair,” Sabine said.

Leia gratefully turned as the other woman begin to run her callused fingers though Leia’s dark tangles. “You have very beautiful hair.”

“Oh. Thank you. So do you,” Leia responded politely.

Sabine laughed. “Maybe in the Water Tribe.”

“Is it not common to dye hair here?” Sabine’s fingers worked the soap through Leia’s hair.

“Well, I’m sure you’ve noticed ours is a warrior culture. There aren’t many who are artists. Especially not in times like this.”

Leia thought of the silver amulet, of the people in Naboo and Alderaan still trying to hold to their cultures traditional art and beauty. “I think especially in times like this,” she said.

The older woman didn’t say anything to that, but her eyes were softer as she passed Leia the ladle to rinse off. Seizing the chance, Leia asked, “What happened to Mandalore?”

Sabine was quiet for a while. Then, “Mandalore has always had a proud culture. The Fire Nation didn’t like that. There were some of us who wanted to accept their occupation. Others didn’t. The Fire Nation feasted on what remained after the fighting. Now most of the clan-heads have been imprisoned or were killed. Mandalore is used as a harbour for Fire Nation ships entering the Earth Kingdom.”

Leia wondered whom she had lost. “I wasn’t even here for much of it. I was part of a rebel cell on Lothal. But we were separated when the Fire Nation finally occupied it.”

“And so you’ve become their leader?” The two women began to dress. Leia watched as Sabine secured the armour onto her body. The obsidian sword fascinated her.

“I’m only the head clan member left.”

If she had set out on this journey earlier, would this have been prevented? Would Alderaan still be strong? Sabine rested a hand on her shoulder. “We all just keep moving, Avatar. We keep moving until we stop.”

Leia thought of a Water Tribe folktale, of how the tiger shark must keep moving or else he will drown. She wondered if a similar tale existed on Mandalore. She set her shoulders and nodded at Sabine.

“Now let’s get that hunk of junk of yours fixed,” Sabine said. Leia laughed.

Han was getting annoyed at the Mandalorian woman’s hovering near the Falcon. The village’s training area was near the shore (explaining how they’d found them so quickly yesterday), but that didn’t mean she _had_ to hover. He’d already sent Chewie to keep watch for any Mandalorians, while Luke, the Princess, and Andor sewed the sails with a thick twine. He didn’t know where the old fossil had got to.

But then Luke had disappeared off somewhere, and Andor had gone after him. Which left him and the Princess. She was stitching with a dark look on her face. He could hear her muttering about the boys just expecting her to do all the housework. Han scowled and focused on the map. He did not want to hear about _that._ It would be at least another month of sailing to reach the North. And that was provided they didn’t run into any other trouble.

Think of the reward. Jabba would finally be off his back. He could go back to keeping his head down in the War, smuggling, and staying far away from Corellia. No more bounty hunters on their trail.

“Your engine is going to blow any day now.”

He jumped. The Mandalorian woman was back. “How did you even get past Chewie?”

Sabine jerked a thumb. Han looked over. Chewie was chomping on a big fish. “Thinking with your stomach, huh?” he yelled. Chewie gave a guilty warble.

“Anyways, mind your business,” he said to Sabine.

“I know my way around Fire Nation machinery. That engine needs repairs.”

“Han, listen to her,” Leia said.

“Who’s in charge here, you or me, Princess? I’m not taking orders from a teenage girl.”

“Of course,” Sabine drawled, “It’s _you_ who does the leading around here, and _you_ who does the daring rescuing and fighting, and _you_ who knows what we should do. She’s not interested in you, buddy.”

She walked away. Han reeled away, ignoring the Princess’ sputtering. Unbidden, the memory: _It’s in the past. This isn’t about you._

Han did not want to think of Qi’ra in this wintery island. He remembered the staggering feeling of seeing her in that opulent criminal den, bedecked in a thick gold necklace and black silk gown, the wide sleeves patterned with intricate suns. The shock of cold water as she had pulled his hands away, dismissed, kindly, the need for a rescue. The numb sensation as she had shaken her head, a stranger to him, and abandoned him and Chewie.

No, she had left him. Abandonment implied a commitment – and he had _loved_ her. Han scowled and stormed away from the Falcon.

When Han found Sabine again, she was practicing a series of sword forms with the black blade against another Mandalorian. Her slender form in the garish armour twisted and jumped, driving her opponent into a corner. Once her opponent yielded, they bowed respectfully to one another. The opponent, an older man, smiled and they began to speak in that strange language of theirs. Sabine was offering some pointers.

Finally, the man left and she walked over to him, arching an eyebrow. “Well, spit it out,” she said.

Qi’ra had owed him nothing.

“I would like to ask for your help with the engine,” he said in his least sarcastic voice.

“Oh, how come? I thought you said it was fine?”

Han swallowed his pride. “I was…presumptuous, and condescending towards…” Han reminded himself that Sabine did not owe him any kindness either. “Women. I was...wrong. I trust the judgment of Mandalore’s leader, and Leia...and any other woman.”

Sabine pursed her lips. Then she pointed her hand towards the shore. It was as good as it was going to get.

He probably deserved that.

Cassian had found Luke practicing his waterbending forms. He could hear him cursing. After observing for a moment, Cassian spoke. “You need to change your stance.”

Luke, who was knee deep in the water, nearly fell over. “You are too sneaky!”

Cassian allowed himself a small smile. “You’re using an earthbending stance. You’re too grounded. A waterbender seizes any advantage, not rooting themselves in a single place.”

Luke sighed. “This and Obi Wan’s meditation lessons aren’t going so well.”

Cassian stepped into the water as well. “You’re a self-taught sandbender, aren’t you? Leia and I are also self-taught. We’re on the same playing field.”

When the boy didn’t respond, Cassian thought for a moment. “Go deeper into the water.” Baffled, Luke followed, looking nervous. Belatedly, Cassian wondered if he could swim. Soon they were waist deep in the frigid water. “I’m not a very spiritual person,” Cassian said, “But General Kenobi isn’t wrong that you need to feel the element. Leia and I lived on the whims of ice and oceans all our life. It’s just new to you.”

This was the most Cassian had ever spoken to Luke, indeed, to most people, and he fell silent, letting the boy work. Nothing. Luke groaned in annoyance. At Cassian’s cool expression, he sighed. Settling into a looser stance, Luke allowed the water to flow over his palms.

Cassian could almost hear Obi Wan saying, reach out with your feelings, as he did every time he got the twins to meditate. He was oddly reluctant for the twins to attempt contact with their past life in Avatar Mace Windu. Perhaps he thought they weren’t ready for it.

Luke gave a shout. A mid-sized wave had grown between them. Rocking his wrists back and forth, Luke followed its natural push and pull, letting it grow larger and larger. “Well done,” Cassian praised.

“I could feel something,” Luke said, “Like I could really feel that the water was there, and what it needed to do.”

From the shore, Artoo gave a frantic bark. A black Fire Nation ship was passing in the distance. In the hull were obvious repairs. It was the ship from the North Pole, that carried the firebender with hungry, desperate eyes. “Artoo, go warn the others!” Luke yelled. The polar bear dog took off.

“They won’t move the ship in time.” Cassian seized Luke around the waist. He had been creating this move in the dark nights aboard the Falcon, but he had never actually tried it. Thrusting out his palm, he rocketed them forward with a great burst of water. They were thrown miles forward into the water of the Unagi.

Two enormous nostrils emerged, scenting the air. “What is your plan?”

“We’re going to push its head towards the ship,” Cassian said. This was insane. This was insane. Luke nodded. Together, they _moved_.

Beneath Luke and Cassian’s power, a wobbling pillar of water rose up. Their wrists snapped forward. The pillar crashed into the Unagi’s rising head as a wave, snapping it around. The Unagi snarled. Shaking its massive head, its huge eyes caught sight of the steamship. The ship was nearly upon them. Then the Unagi hissed. With an awful roar, it surged towards the steamship.

“We did it!” Luke clapped Cassian’s shoulder hard. Despite himself, Cassian grinned. There was definitely something about fighting a fifty-foot man-eating eel that bonded people.

There was no time to get emotional though.

Cassian bent himself back onto the shore, as Luke followed more clumsily. The sail was nearly done, while Solo was bent over the engine.

“Start sewing!” Cassian tossed the sail at Luke. “I’ll find General Kenobi!”

“Come on, Princess, we need to get this engine running! Luke, get sewing!” Solo had thrust a wrench at Leia. She opened her mouth. Then she grinned, grabbed the wrench, and joined him.

Cassian ran through the woods. In the village, he headed straight towards Rex’s home. Obi Wan was inside with Rex’s cousin’s Wolffe and Gregor, laughing over a tea session. “Fire Nation,” he said. Instantly, the Mandalorians’ faces darkened. They begin pulling their helmets on, squabbling in their tongue.

“We’ll buy you time to make your escape,” Rex said. By the time Cassian had packed their things, he could hear the soldiers marching through the streets. He and Obi Wan slowly snuck between the houses. “I said, I saw their ship! Where are you hiding them?”

The firebender.

Cassian heard the roar of a fireball as the street exploded into chaos. Obi Wan made a motion. They began to run. Arrows and fire flew across the main street. Rex and his brothers were knocking and firing arrows faster than he could see. Sabine, hands coated in engine grease, was tangling with some of the elite soldiers. The Fire Woman cried out. An enormous jet of fire rocketed towards them.

The old man stepped forward. His hands glowed with bright blue flame. Then he sliced, tearing the flame apart.

The run back to the ship was a haze. It was only when they were out on open water, darting around the Unagi, that Cassian rounded on the old man. “You’re a firebender,” he said.

“I am,” the old man said.

Cassian unobtrusively uncorked his waterskin. “You intentionally deceived us. How do we know you are not a spy?”

Everyone was watching now. “In my defence, you assumed I was an earthbender,” the firebender said, “I merely did not correct it.”

“Hey, captain, being Fire Nation doesn’t mean everything,” Solo said, “I’m from the colonies, you gonna toss me overboard for that too?”

Cassian was considering it. “I am not your enemy,” the firebender said, “I hold no allegiance to the Fire Nation, though it is the country of my birth. I am a member of an ancient organization committed to culture, beauty, and peace. For that reason, I left the Fire Nation before the start of the War. I am a defector. This war is a blight on the world, and it must end.”

Cassian gritted his teeth. “Surely you don’t think that I’m trying to kill you. I could have done that ages ago. I could have let that woman take Luke. I could have let the squads on Naboo as well.”

Whether or not he believed in ancient conspiracies – which he did not – he knew that Kenobi could have killed them easily days ago. It didn't make any of this easier.

Cassian ran a hand threw his hair raggedly. “Fine. I’m going to sleep.”

In the hold, Cassian stared at the ceiling, absently stroking a dozing Kay. He was being unprofessional. But a firebender… He had so little pity for the Fire Nation filth. Kenobi was human. Was witty and charming and looked out for the twins. But he was a _firebender_. He had not been willing to strike down the stunned fire woman, even when she was off guard.

In the dark, he dreamt of the fire woman’s green eyes, and wondered, if she, too, deserved mercy.

The Fire Nation ship had retreated. In the morning, none had returned. The Avatar, then, was the priority, not Mandalore’s resistance. But it was time now, it seemed, to make their decision felt.

Rex walked to the messenger tower, scroll in hand. He tied it to a messenger bird. “Keep it safe,” he said. The bird took to the sky.

In the sunlight, a coded name glinted on the scroll’s seal.

 _Fulcrum_.


	4. Book One: Hope IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning: some non-graphic talk of prison-slavery and genocide, Cassian being Cassian and offing some bad guys

Cassian was fucked.

As the Fire Nation soldiers dragged him, chained, through the prison rig, Cassian reflected on his situation. He had gone with Kay to Lothal to obtain information on the fire woman pursuing them, as well as on the plans of the Fire Nation. Bail had sent word that there was a rebel spy in town. Calliope, Bail said her name was, one of the dark-skinned Air Nomads. Carrying critical information that led back to Saw Gerrera. The fact that one of their own was willing to hand over information on Saw told Cassian more than enough. The Fire Nation's actions in the Earth Kingdom were growing bloodier, with it, the reprisal from the locals.

They'd wasted valuable time days earlier, when Solo had taken them past the rocky pirate's grotto of Florrum, and had run into the ongoing spat between the pirate Captains Hondo Ohnaka, and Caline Metara. And of course, the old man had some past friendship with Ohnaka, despite his fervent denial. Still, Ohnaka had been very taken with the twins. Well, with Luke. ("Just like his father," Ohnaka had cried, "Chest like a bull, hair like gold, eyes like the sky, horrible attitude -" Leia had coughed discreetly. "Oh, well, you're nice too.") The bizarre Captain, an older, brown-skinned man like those from Jedha, Sriluur, and Mon Cala, had decided to let them go after the old firebender had spun some honeyed tale. The people of the Earth Kingdom were proud and resilient, labeled as aggressive and dangerous by the Fire Nation. It did not surprise Cassian that Ohnaka and his crew had been swayed to their cause, even if their moral code was dubious. Seeing his face had reminded Cassian of that Earth Kingdom man aboard the Fire Nation ship. He pushed that thought aside. The other Captain, Metara, a short-haired and practical woman from Alderaan, had refused outright to hand over Leia to the Fire Nation for a reward. The only good outcome of the day had been tentative agreements from both to help with the Rebel cause.

More willing to fight back was all well and good, but that hadn't been Cassian's mission. Juggling being spy, teacher, caretaker, even friend... The twins didn't understand his insistence for them to make it to the occupied Lothal. But he had seen the look in the old firebender's eyes.

The plan had been simple. He'd been late, but it seemed fine at the time. He had been expected to rendezvous with the group tomorrow, once he'd received the intel. Instead, he had been caught up in a Fire Nation raid of suspected earthbenders as he’d left. Too many soldiers. Cassian had been captured. They had taken his waterskin and most of his knives. They had bound his hands and feet. Kay had managed to escape with Cassian’s urging to find the group. Now he was aboard a massive prison rig in the ocean. Nobody knew where he was.

The words of the informant, Calliope, replayed over and over in his head as the warden dismissed them.

Ring of Kafrene. Five days from now. There’s a contact. They’re wary of sharing. You’re our best. You need to convince him to part with the information.

And, The woman’s name is Jyn Erso. She’s the daughter of a Fire Nation weapons specialist named Galen Erso. In exile. Motivations unknown. Loyalties unknown. Do not engage.

Five days, he thought, as he stared at the ceiling of his cell.

He was _fucked_.

Cassian used the next day to gain a better sense of the outline of the prison rig, before he planned for any sort of escape. From casual conversations with a bored and underpaid guard (he had a pregnant girlfriend back home, which Cassian didn’t like to dwell on), he understood that the rig was used for ship building. He had not been permitted to go outside or work in the shipyard. They likely believed he was a more powerful waterbender than he was, and were trying to keep him away from the ocean.

In fact, it seemed that they didn’t really know what to do with him. He could not be used for kitchen labour (too much water around), cleaning (ditto), or maintenance (potential sabotage). So he was left to wander the prison complex with strict orders not to get in the way. This made Cassian uneasy. A prison-slave without function was a dead one, sooner or later.

The complex was five stories tall, separated by sex. The top floor was used by the guards and warden. This entire complex sat atop some kind of metal structure, and was encircled by a guard wall. Outside was the shipyard on one side, and a yard for the prisoners on the other. The only way off were the ferries that transported captives from the mainland.

Most importantly, the entire thing was made of metal. The earthbenders were trapped.

Cassian assessed what tools he had available to him. They had not discovered his lockpicks, or one of the knives he carried on his person. He stood out amongst the Earth Kingdom prisoners – he would not be able to escape during the day, even if he made it past all the guards. But that left the variable open if the ferries docked at night. Or if there were boats docked outside.

Or if he could steer one, but Cassian felt that was really the least of his concerns.

He needed information from someone who was on the outside. But, as he was served an awful porridge gruel in the mess hall, it was clear few were interested in talking. Most of the earthbenders were worn and haggard. They spoke little and stared vacantly. Some Cassian guessed had been here since the early days of the War.

He had lived most of his life next to the ocean. He could not imagine what it felt to be cut off from one’s element, to not hear its song in the quiet of the night. They were even forbidden from speaking in their Earth Kingdom dialects. The Fire Lord despised those who could bend Air, Water, and Earth most of all. The War had first begun with a rumoured purge of those peacekeeping forces dedicated to the alliance between the Four Nations. _I myself favour the Jedi tile…_ There was something there, Cassian thought. The early days of the War were unclear, chaotic. He had been only six years old, but he still remembered when Bail had returned, an unspeakable grief writ across his face. Jedi… Powerful individuals from all Four Nations, working together to keep peace… What a fairy story.

Scanning the room, Cassian sat down at one of the tables. Nobody in his vicinity looked particularly open to talking. Then he noticed a tan skinned man with dark hair nearby. He was looking down at a locket tucked into his tattered tunic. The locket was beautifully, uniquely painted.

"Hello,” Cassian said in Basic, as he sat down in front of the man. “Sorry, I couldn’t help but notice that. I wish… well, it doesn’t matter now, does it? I wish I had given something like that to my wife before I was taken.”

The man looked at him warily. “It’s from my girlfriend.”

“I’ve seen some like it, when I was further south.”

The man said nothing to that. In fact, he was making to stand and leave. Cassian understood the suspicion. He was an anomaly here. There was no community of shared background. He could be anyone. Cassian thought quickly. There were guards everywhere, and they couldn’t hide the conversation with another language.

It came to him then. It was a long shot, but he was out of options. Hope, then, it was. “Would you like to play a game of Dejarik?”

“There’s no board.”

“I myself favour the Jedi tile.”

The man stilled. Slowly, he sat back down. “There aren’t many that still cling to the ancient ways.”

“Those who do can always find a friend.”

The man sat back, shaking his fringe out of his face. “What’s your name?”

“Willix,” Cassian said.

If he doubted him, he didn’t show it. “I’m Ezra.”

“So, Ezra,” Cassian said conversationally, infusing his voice with warmth, “I’m not allowed outside as a waterbender. What’s the prison like?”

They arrived at their first stumbling block. According to Ezra, the ferries only docked during the day, leaving before their shift ended. Ezra however, knew when the guards rotated. It was a very short window when the guards, distracted, might give him an edge to slip by. Especially since he had a knife. If Ezra could overpower the other guards…

They exited the mess hall along with another crowd, but Ezra pulled him into a corner. “Listen, I appreciate that there’s another rebel here, but I’m not leaving this prison with you.”

“What?” Cassian narrowed his eyes.

“I’m not leaving without the other prisoners.”

“There are over a hundred of us in here!” Cassian snapped in a low whisper. “You’ve been here for months and have nothing to show for it. When the War ends, the rig will be destroyed.”

“Most of these people aren’t going to last that long,” Ezra said flatly.

He turned and walked away. In his cell, Cassian ground his teeth. He didn’t like the disgust in the other man’s eyes. He was a soldier though. He didn’t know what Cassian and others like him had to do. Over a hundred souls against the end of the War.

He rolled over and banished the thought from his head as quickly as possible.

Four days. He allowed a cold, rational mindset to overtake him. His only other option now was for his friends to liberate them. And who even knew where they were?

Somewhere, in Lothal…

“That iguana parrot’s earthbending!”

“No, you idiot, it’s the boy!”

“He really is his father’s son,” Obi Wan commented, as Leia’s palm met her forehead.

It came to Cassian in the middle of the night. There had been smoke coming out of the prison rig when he had been taken. The rig ran on a fuel source. Coal. It had to be stored in the metal structure beneath the prison complex, brought in and shovelled by Fire Nation workers.

And if there was a master switch, Cassian had a very good idea where it was.

It was crazy, and suicidal. He was putting his safety and his duty to the Avatar aside for the lives of these earthbenders.

 _How are you so good at this?_ Leia had asked.

He was doing this because he was as good as dead either way. And he needed to get off this rig as soon as possible.

In the morning, Cassian grabbed Ezra’s arm as they were getting food. “The rig is powered by coal,” he hissed in Earth Kingdom dialect, “I’m going to get them open. You have to convince the prisoners to fight back.”

“Oi! Waterbender!”

“Think fast,” Cassian said. He could feel the water in the cups around him. Thrumming. Singing. Water adapted to anything. Cassian _pulled_.

A water whip smashed across Ezra’s face. A guard yelled and threw a blast of fire. Cassian swept the water into the guard’s face. In the confusion, he pulled two ice daggers into his sleeves. He struck again with another torrent, and exhaled. The water froze. The guard was iced to the wall.

Another guard tackled him, yanking his hands behind his back. Metal cuffs. “You’re all cowards!” Cassian yelled, “You can take your fate into your hands! Fight back!”

“You think these people are going to revolt?” A guard laughed. “Their spirits were broken long ago. They’ve forgotten how to bend.”

He struggled, playing the part of a troublemaker. “You’re going to see the warden.”

As he was dragged away, Cassian made eye contact with Ezra. The man nodded. Cassian was forced into a metal lift, which was pulled upwards by a thick steel rope. On the top floor, Cassian was pulled out. And then he was being brought into the office of the warden.

“Ah, the Water Tribe peasant,” the warden said, “And what do you have to say for your behaviour?”

Cassian stabbed the ice daggers into the arms of the guards holding him. They let go, yelling. Melting the daggers into a sheet of water, he sliced through the cuffs. Bending fast, he flung his hands out. Recrystalizing, the daggers hit the throats of the two guards. The warden lunged across his desk. Cassian didn’t flinch. He pulled his only remaining knife and stabbed the man.

With a pained gasp, the warden slid onto the table. Swiftly, Cassian put his knife back. He allowed the heat of battle to carry his movements. In moments, he had the warden’s desk open. He grabbed his waterskin and his other knives. Then he began to search for the prison’s control system. It was secured inside one of the cabinets. Reading the Fire Nation script, he swiftly flicked those that unlocked every cell, the coal sheds, and the doors to the outside world.

He heard a rumble. Good. He wondered if Ezra would live, then dismissed the thought abruptly. It wasn’t something he ought to dwell on.

As Cassian raced through the emptied prison complex, he could hear sounds of battle. He burst into the bright sunlight. For a second, he was blind. When his vision cleared, he saw the earthbenders smashing through the ranks of Fire Nation soldiers. And Ezra was leading the charge.

“For the Earth Kingdom!” the prisoners roared.

Cassian wove around the chaos, striking soldiers with their backs turned as quick as he could. “Willix!”

It was Ezra. “Where’s the warden?”

“I killed him.”

“What?”

One of the guards tackled Cassian, knocking a knife from his hands. It skittered across the deck out of his reach. A lump of coal smacked into the guard’s head, and he toppled over. “Thanks,” Cassian said. Ezra nodded, pulling him to his feet.

The fight was over fast. The guards that remained alive were bound as the prisoners began to prepare the ferries to return to the mainland. A battered vessel pulled up. The earthbenders tensed. A mongoose lizard jumped out and immediately knocked Cassian off his feet. It began to lick him enthusiastically.

“Kay, stop,” he said, but he allowed himself to scratch under Kay’s chin. Two figures bounded out of the ship. Cassian found himself being hugged by Luke and Leia. Baffled, he awkwardly patted them on the back. It was an odd sensation. “We thought you and all the earthbenders were good as dead,” Leia whispered, “The villagers…they say every Earthbender on the Southern Coast has been in here for years.”

“It’s alright,” Cassian said, “It’s over. They’re free.” Louder, he said, “You’re all free.”

A ragged cheer rose up. There was hope now in those weathered tan and brown faces. Perhaps it was a fool’s hope. But it had meant something, to them. He did not think of what would’ve happened if he had abandoned them.

The earthbenders began to sail off. Ezra nodded at him as he passed. Cassian considered asking him to stay as an earthbending teacher, but he suspected Ezra’s course lay elsewhere. Sabine had mentioned a rebel cell in Lothal. They would probably never see him again.

“May the spirits protect you,” Cassian said. An old, out-of-fashion saying. It felt like the right thing to say.

For himself, he followed the twins back onto the ship, where Artoo gave him a happy lick, and Threepio a delighted squawk. Even Solo gave him a lazy salute. Only the old firebender was quiet, merely inclining his head. “Set course for the Ring of Kafrene,” Cassian said. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

The Falcon pulled away from the rig. “How did you all find me?” Cassian continued.

“Well,” Leia said, as Luke and Han looked suddenly contrite, “After some dumb ideas, I started asking around the village Kay brought us to. Then we tailed one of the ferries, and here we are.”

“Good plan.”

“So, how did you get out?”

“I started a prison riot.”

_“What?”_

Jyn walked across the ravaged prison rig. The sun was setting. The golden light fell on something that was neither coal nor metal. She reached down and picked it up.

A Water Tribe knife.

She thought of the stoic face with blank, cold eyes. He had been there, at the edge of her vision, as she had struggled against the Avatar. The knife had been in his hand. She wondered why her mind had remembered him, in all the chaos.

_Never change, Stardust._

She turned it over slowly in her hand, and watched the sun bleed into the horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caline Metara is a real SW character - she and her crew appear in the EU novel Razor's Edge, where they are Alderaan citizens who escaped the Death Star blast and turned to piracy. Calliope Drouth is also real, she's an ultra minor character mentioned in I believe Star Wars insider, as a journalist. 
> 
> Coming up next - Jyn ties Cassian to a tree, some Jyn backstory, and the beginnings of the Death Star plot (which is NOT a space station here!)...


	5. Book One: Hope V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jyn and Cassian finally meet properly (vs. glaring obsessively at each other)! 
> 
> Some notes: The beginning of this chapter is a paraphrase of the Ring of Kafrene scene in Rogue One (so content warning for Cassian being Cassian). The asterisked line on pity and pragmatism is taken from the Rogue One novelisation. Also context for people unfamiliar/watched ATLA when they were eight, the comet is an important plot point in ATLA as it increases firebending power to unprecedented levels. 
> 
> Anyways, hope everyone enjoys this chapter!

The Ring of Kafrene was a seedy port area on the western coast of the Earth Kingdom. It was an ugly, rocky piece of land that jutted out into the sea. It had been in disrepair and poverty before the War, but the occupation had made it worse. The hand of the Fire Nation was heavy here, but it had become a fact of life. The Water Tribes were known for adapting to any hardship, but it seemed people everywhere could become accustomed to things, given time. Now it was a frequent stopping point for transit between the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation. The Fire Nation had cracked down on many of the illegal activities here. But piracy and exotic wares and smuggling still flourished, as long as the petty colonist bureaucrats were getting a cut.

Cassian threaded his way through the crowd of all Four Nations, many in clothes patched together. He jostled between the ugly black stone buildings, squat and square, that rose from the ground in maze-like forms. He could smell meat cooking. It was dark out, but the port never seemed to sleep. The moon and torchlight reflected off the dark stone, making Cassian’s head swim. The bright flashes of wares, the tangle of every Earth Kingdom language, the variety of peoples, made it seem like the stranglehold of the Fire Nation was far away.

But then there was the sound of someone demanding passports and papers. There were Fire Nation soldiers everywhere. Signs were posted on restrictions for locals, and penalties for locals for the smallest of crimes to survive. Perhaps they had been here so long that the transients here could pretend that the Fire Nation was very far away. To do nothing and accept this 'order'... A man jostled his shoulder, and he grunted. Two more Fire Nation soldiers passed. Cassian watched them with veiled dislike.

Turning in an alleyway, he saw an Earth Kingdom man waiting, arm in a sling. “I was about to leave!” he said frantically.

Cassian smoothed his face into an affable one. “I came as fast as I could.”

“I have to get back on board. Walk with me.”

Cassian stopped him. “Back to Jedha?”

“They’ll leave without me!”

The man was trying to force himself past Cassian. He could see fear in the man’s eyes. “Easy!” Cassian snapped, “You have news from Jedha. Come on.”

Panting, the man stepped back. For a second, Cassian despised his cowardice. “We had an informant, but he’s dead now. He said there’s rumours they’re making a weapon.”

The Fire Nation was always building weapons. “What kind of weapon?”

“Look, I have to go-”

Cassian seized the man’s tunic and forced him back against the wall. _“What kind of weapon?”_

“One that will end the War! In less than a year! They’re going to use it when the comet Plagueis comes back! He called it the Death Star!”

“Death Star,” Cassian whispered. His blood was thrumming in his ears.

“Someone named Erso tipped him off,” the man continued, breathless now. “Some old friend of Saw’s.”

 _Erso_. “Galen Erso? Was it?”

“I don’t know!”

“Who else knows about this?”

“I have no idea!” The man snapped. He looked at Cassian with frightened, desperate eyes. He pushed Cassian’s hands away. “It’s all falling apart. Saw’s right. There’s spies everywhere.”

“What’s all this?” There were two Fire Nation soldiers behind them. Cassian affected a friendly smile. “Come on, let’s see some passports.”

“Yes…of course…just, my gloves,” Cassian said. He bent down as though to remove them. Cassian bent two ice daggers from his waterskin, sending them into the soldier’s throats. One of them managed to bend a clumsy burst of fire as he fell.

Chaos broke loose on the street in front of them. Fire Nation soldiers were yelling. A patrol was racing towards them. His informant was yelling too. “I’ll never climb out of here with my arm!”

Cassian squeezed the man’s shoulder as they backed towards the wall. “Hey. Hey. Calm down. Calm down.” He patted the man’s chest, softening his tone. “It will be alright.”

The ice dagger slid right into the man’s heart. Cassian watched his body fall. He stared at it for a moment. The dead thing that had been a man began to bleed onto the street as the dagger dissolved. He could hear the soldiers yelling. He kept staring at the body. _Tivik_. That had been the man’s name.

He wrenched his eyes away. Then he leapt and began to scale the wall.

On the Falcon, which they had docked in a cove Solo knew about, Cassian sat the group down and explained the situation. Then he addressed the old firebender. “What is the comet Plagueis?”

The old man rubbed his beard. “There was a legend I remember learning as a child,” Obi Wan said, “That every hundred years, after a long summer, a red star will bleed across the sky. Under that star will come a power beyond imagining, that could rebirth or destroy the world anew.”

Death Star. “The Fire Lord is going to use that comet to end the War,” Cassian whispered. “Once and for all.”

Leia looked ashen. “And that’s coming this summer, you said,” she said. “We only have one year to master all four elements.”

“It’s still weeks until we reach the North Pole with all the detours we’ve had to take!” Luke cried, “And the winter solstice has already passed!”

“*Mastering the four elements takes years of discipline and practice,” the old man said, “But it can be done.”

 _“How?”_ Luke and Leia cried at the same time.

“I believe in you,” he said gently. “You have done it before, in a thousand lifetimes. This is what you were born to do. Your triumph over the Fire Lord will bring balance to the world.”

The twins exchanged uncertain glances. Cassian himself took little stock in pretty words. Holding the Four Nations together had been a challenge even before the Fire Lord declared himself ruler of the world.

“We need to get moving,” Cassian said, “We’ll stock up on supplies here. Enough to get us further north than we can now.”

Back at Kafrene’s port, they split up, with Cassian insisting that he and Kenobi would go together. Cassian still didn’t trust the old firebender. After they obtained some sacks of food, which he strapped to Kay, Cassian noted the old firebender eyeing one of the seedy pirate ships docked. An excited pirate was encouraging people to take a gander at their curios. “Let’s take a look.”

“Why?”

“If you think those three haven’t gotten distracted, you don’t know them that well,” the old man said, as though he were offering Cassian sage wisdom. Rolling his eyes, Cassian acquiesced.

The ship was filled with absolute junk. Stolen statues, tacky jewellery, rusted weaponry from the days of Avatar Nomi Sunrider… He had a headache. It was probably the old man’s fault. Until Cassian noticed a familiar symbol on one of the scrolls. He picked it up. Unfurling it, he inhaled sharply. It was a waterbending scroll, with moves he had never learnt before. This was stolen. Stolen from the Tribe, here now in the hands of pirates. Alderaan had once had a great library, much of it ash now. A piece of his culture, slipping every day through the Tribe’s fingers.

And the twins needed to learn waterbending, fast.

“How much for the scroll?” He asked the Captain, a dark-skinned woman with a head of tight brown curls. Cassian had never thought there were Air Nomad pirates, given their culture emphasized freedom from materiality. The War changed things. He was proof enough of that. A Water Tribe spy and murderer.

Her eyes raked over him. She gave him an unimpressed look. “It’s already got a buyer. Unless you’ve got two hundred gold pieces on you, it’s not for sale.”

Kenobi stepped smoothly in front of him. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes in Kafrene? Tell me, my darling, where are you from?”

Cassian considered ritual suicide.

“I’m widowed. Get out of my sight.”

On the docks, the old man said under his breath, “So did you get the scroll?”

Cassian controlled his flinch. “Yes,” he said stiffly.

“Good work.”

Cassian grunted.

Jyn was probably amongst the few who didn’t hate Kafrene. The understanding that nothing changed, that life had been chaotic and full of war before the War, was one she got implicitly. The Earth Kingdom was so vast that it was easy to imagine that Kafrene was a kindness. There was something about walking through the crowd of strangers, melting into it, that appealed to her. To become nobody, with no ties, connections, responsibilities – to reinvent herself.

One day she and her father would do the same.

“I wish you’d stop spinning that dagger everywhere we go,” Bodhi said beside her. “Do you ever put that thing down?”

“Mind your business,” Jyn said, folding her arms with a huff. Bodhi rolled his eyes discreetly. She couldn’t explain the urge to play with it, as though holding it would bring her closer to the Avatar. She rubbed her thumb over the carved bone handle of a tiger shark.

They passed through the group of pirates. One of them was speaking to the Captain, a tall, dark-skinned woman wrapped in furs and leather. “Val, we lost that old man and the Water Tribe boy with the giant lizard.”

Jyn froze. She turned and met the woman’s dark eyes.

“Val, was it? That boy…was it a mongoose lizard with him?” she asked.

The Falcon had docked itself along a river that led North, cutting through the Earth Kingdom. Cassian lay in the hold, staring at the wooden ceiling. He and the twins had begun training as they sailed. Still, Cassian felt that he was not progressing rapidly enough to be their waterbending teacher.

To be the last Southern waterbender.

He rose and seized the scroll. On a riverbank far from the Falcon, Cassian began to move through the forms, cursing under his breath. He’d mastered the single waterwhip, but these huge wave forms were getting to him. “Fuck!”

“My, my.”

The pirate captain was standing there under the moonlight. She grinned, and drew a long, curved blade. More and more pirates joined her. And there, in the centre, was the fire woman and her Earth Kingdom friend.

They had tied him to a tree.

Cassian glared at Jyn Erso, no, the fire woman. Up close, she was smaller than he’d expected. He had a full head of height on her. He could see deep shadows under her eyes. Restless from hunting the Avatar. Something about her made him uneasy. Dangerous. “Tell me where the they are, and I won’t harm you.”

Cassian watched her impassively. They’d been trying this for a while now.

“Try to understand,” she said, circling around him in a predatory way. Her eyes are green, he thought in the back of his mind. “I’m trying to restore something I’ve lost with the Avatar. In exchange, I can return something you’ve lost.”

She produced one of his knives. Cassian looked at it, then at her. “I have more than one of those,” he said.

The fire woman scowled. “I know you’re trying to protect the girl, but it’s not going to work.”

Baffled, Cassian said, “The girl?”

“The female Avatar,” she snapped, “You’re not…oh…”

“Erso, this is nonsense!” the pirate captain snapped. Cassian watched as they negotiated over his waterbending scroll. So, she had cut a deal with them. She was stupid, or desperate, or maybe a bit of both. After their last run in with pirates, he knew the fire woman was out of her depth.

It took the threat of burning the scroll to make the pirates obey. They fanned onto into the forest to search for the Falcon. The remaining Fire Nation soldiers remained on the riverbank. The Earth Kingdom man sat down next to Cassian. The fire woman stood a distance away, looking at the river. Cassian rubbed his wrists together, trying to see if he could get loose. It was good rope. He had to admire their effectiveness.

“My name’s Bodhi Rook,” the man said, giving him a nervous smile. Cassian glanced over at him. “I suppose…you’re probably not going to tell me your name?”

He assessed the man before him. Twitchy. Nails looked chewed on. Blatantly approaching him. A weak link. In a friendlier voice, Cassian asked, “Where are you from?”

_Why are you here with this firebender?_

“Oh me? I’m from Jedha.”

Cassian was surprised. “That is very far from here or the Fire Nation. I’ve heard the Holy City is beautiful,” he said conversationally.

“It’s a war zone now.”

The fire woman had entered the conversation. She was trying to play him as much as he was playing them. Those hungry eyes. _Something I’ve lost_.

“Yes,” Bodhi said sadly. “They say they’ve gutted the Holy Temple. My family used to go there often to pray. Now it’s probably rubble.”

“I’m sorry,” Cassian said, and found he meant it. “Why would they destroy the temple? Has the Fire Nation forgotten the wrath of the Spirits?”

Bodhi shrugged. “There’s only kyber crystals inside. Maybe the Fire Nation wants to enter into the jewellery business?”

His attempt at a joke fell flat. Cassian noticed the fire woman was grasping the woven cord around her neck. A kyber crystal hung from it. “My father used to say they were used to channel the Sprits and the Spirit World,” she said. Her knuckles were white.

“He’s very wise. You two must be very close.”

Her eyes were locked on his. In the moonlight, he thought there might be specks of brown in them. “As close as two people can be with one in exile,” she said.

“When was the last time you saw your father?”

A door seemed to shut across her face. “Fifteen years ago.”

A lie. “You must miss him and your mother terribly.”

There was something on her face then that moved him, despite himself. It left Cassian suddenly breathless. Unbidden, his little sisters’ faces swam before him. “Wouldn’t anyone?”

“I hope you see him again soon, then.”

He felt like those eyes might devour him, might devour anyone, if only they could get what they wanted. “Soon,” she said, like a dying man being offered water.

“You can help him with his work on Fire Nation military projects.”

She looked at him now, seeming to really take in his face. He wondered what she found there. “I’ve never had the luxury of political opinions.”

He gave a mirthless laugh. “Really?”

“And what about your family, hmm?” she snapped, stepping closer to him.

“They’re all dead. In Fire Nation raids,” he said flatly. “Tell me, what does the Fire Lord look like? Ever seen him?”

The fire woman froze. A strange expression that Cassian could not decipher crossed her face. “Once,” was all she said. She walked away.

Cassian spent the night of restless sleep trying his best to think of an escape plan. *The fire woman dominated his thinking nonetheless. Cassian believed neither pity nor pragmatism explained it.*

As the morning broke, he heard the pirates calling that the group had been caught. He had one plan, and it was a stupid one. But it was all he had. He would rather be dead than go to the Fire Nation in chains.

The fire woman was standing near him. He hissed at her, “Hey. Those pirates are going to turn on you. If they do, I want you to free me and give me back my knife.”

“I am not -”

“I’m not saying it will happen. But I don’t want to die here in the crossfire if they decide they’d rather take the scroll by force.”

She studied him, eyes raking over his much larger body. “Fine. But I’m keeping the knife.”

“Why?”

“Trust goes both ways.”

He could overpower her in a second if she was taken by surprise. She might have been a firebender, but she was small. His eyes flicked from the knife to her face. “Agreed.”

His friends were dragged into the clearing, held tightly by the pirates. The moment of truth had arrived. As the pirates and Fire Nation negotiated, Cassian saw the old man’s eyes drifting between the two groups, and then settling on the Captain. “Val, was it?” he said. His voice was smooth. You wanted to listen to it. “You’re really going to make the trade of the Avatar for a piece of parchment?”

“She’s trying to turn us against each other!”

Val looked over at Leia. “Which one of you is the Avatar?”

Leia grabbed Luke’s hand and raised it. “I’m only saying, it’s a poor deal. Do you know how much the bounty on them is?”

Val grinned. “It’s been a pleasure, Fire Nation. Keep the scroll. I’m taking the kids,” she said, with a two fingered salute. Instantly, fire was flying. The pirates were dropping smoke bombs and yelling. He saw Val aim a nasty swipe at Bodhi with a curved blade. Cursing now, Cassian furiously rubbed his wrists together. He needed to get to his friends! The ropes around him caught fire. He tossed them off as fast as possible.

The fire woman was watching him, holding his knife in her hand. Cassian held her gaze for a moment.

Then he turned and ran off towards his friends. He spared her only a single, backwards glance, as Jyn Erso threw herself back into the fray.

Freeing his friends with a few quick water slices, they raced back towards the Falcon. Overhead, he could see Threepio, in perhaps his greatest moment of bravery, clutching the scroll between his claws. “Remind me to give him a treat!” Luke yelled.

“No, Threepio is on a strict diet of -”

“Not the time!” Cassian yelled, as they took to the water. The pirates and Fire Nation had realised their loss and were boarding their ships. “We have to push them back!”

“And how do you expect to do that?”

Luke set his hands on both their shoulders. “With three waterbenders.”

Cassian frowned. The ticking clock twisted in his gut like a vice. But the earnest belief on Luke and Leia’s faces could not be ignored. They looked to him like the North Star. Always, he was holding the group together. He was tired, sometimes. But he had to keep going. Cassian breathed in.

As three, they sank into a crouch. Hands lifted. A wave, three stories high, rose up. It did not waver. It smashed into the pursuing ships, sending them miles back down the river. There was a pause. Then, “We did it! We did it!” Luke said. Leia laughed. The old man, who had been watching, applauded sincerely. “And the way you tricked those pirates -”

“Well, they did call me the Negotiator in my youth…”

“Could you four cut out the self-congratulating and help _me_?” Solo snapped from the stern. Four pirates had jumped aboard their ship before the wave hit and were tussling with Solo and Chewie. Leia snapped off four waterwhips efficiently before any of them could move. “Huh. Thanks, Your Worship.”

Leia sniffed and walked back to the bow. Threepio alighted on her shoulder. She took the scroll from him. “We’re going to do this,” she said. Cassian thought of how the water had responded to him. For the first time, he believed her.

"The Avatar, right between my fingers! That old wizard... And I swear, I recognized the ship they were traveling on: the _Millennium Falcon_!" Val thundered, pounding her tankard in one of the many cantinas of Kafrene.

In the darkened space, a pale-skinned woman wearing a green headdress decorated with jangling metal discs perked up. She nudged her identical twin. "Brea...did you hear?" Senni Tonnika whispered.

The message carried. It hopped along to the filthy cantina in the Mos Eisley Oasis and the band the Modal Nodes. It slithered through the chaos of Jabba's Palace to the bloated man himself. _"Solo? Avatar?"_

But the message did not merely stay among thieves and scoundrels. The rumours were spreading further and wider. Nothing could stop them now.

They reached, soon enough, a voice, low and raspy from the flames of a volcanic nightmare. An old wizard... A memory, pushed deep down, a presence not felt in near twenty years...

"Obi Wan," the voice spoke, "And the Avatar. I wonder..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Val is Thandie Newton's character from Solo who got like five minutes screentime and was unceremoniously blown up. BOO, Lucasfilm, BOO. 
> 
> Next chapter: Cassian tells a story, some Jyn and Cassian backstory and thematic parallels (TM), Luke and Leia confront responsibility to the world, and some HanLeia goodness!


	6. Interlude: Moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short little bonus chapter: if you want to see Han and Leia getting closer, some Spirit world mysteries, and some hints of Tarkin's plans in the story, you can read on! If not, proceed on to the next chapter, which has also been posted.
> 
> Content warning: one brief mention of sexual assault occurring to a minor character

The Falcon often sailed through the night on their journey. Naboo, Florrum, Lothal, the Earth Kingdom was populated by more villages and cultures than Leia could imagine. And they had no time to stop in each and every one.

Leia had little trouble sleeping amongst multiple people. As the winter days grew shorter, the Tribe often slept together in the communal igloo for warmth. Luke’s soft breathing at her side and Obi Wan’s rumbly snores kept her anchored. She knew Cassian’s light slumber like an old friend. It was the rocking of the ship that unsettled. She would stare at the wooden ceiling of the ship, chewing over and over her thoughts.

My parents hid the truth of my power. My people died for me. The people of the world are dying. The Fire Nation is enslaving and murdering benders.

Leia sat up. Cassian twitched, but did not rise. Getting to her feet, Leia found one of her lighter furs. She wrapped it around herself. As old and ramshackle as the Falcon was, Han kept the place free of splinters. She padded to the deck in her woolen socks.

Han was awake. The moon was a waxing crescent. The silvery light pooled across the deck, flickering over the gold in the smuggler’s hair. He was resting against the engine, as Chewie snored next to him. “You’re up,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“Incredible observation,” Leia said. “Do you sleep out here?”

“Someone’s got to keep the Falcon moving. Me and this guy do shifts.” He rubbed Chewie’s shaggy fur. “Pretty warm, even with the smell.”

Seeing Han semi-snuggled into Chewie’s heavy coat made Leia quirk a very small smile. She walked to the bow of the ship. “Couldn’t sleep, Princess?”

“Don’t call me that.”

Something in her tone must have registered. Han went quiet. Leia leaned against the railing. The bow of the ship sunk into the waves and reared back up again. Her skin ached for something to do. There was always something to do in the Pole.

Under the Moonlight, Leia began to bend.

  
  
The routine continued.

Leia would emerge from the hold. Han would be awake at the engine. He would nod at her arrival. Sometimes he offered her a bite to eat. The silver light of the Moon, progressively growing rounder, would guide her bending practice.

And Han would say nothing.

Leia never looked back to see if he was watching. She had never imagined that Han could be _quiet_. That he could understand her need for space, for time. That he knew what ghosts were.

At first, she bent with her shoulders tensed, her teeth clenched. Waited for some moment of utter insensitivity, even cruelty. The men of the Water Tribe, growing up in a community like theirs, knew how to respect the female sex. Leia still remembered a terrible day when Falena, her mother’s attendant, had sobbed and revealed a Tribesmen had forced himself upon her. And the Chief and Tribe had known what to do. The man’s family had held him down as Falena had slit his throat.

And Han would say and do nothing.

Slowly, her shoulders loosened. Her forehead smoothed. Leia bent greater, bigger, under the Moon. One night, she laughed, as she caught a fish in a fat orb, easily twisting it through the air before she set it free. Something in her unknotted.

And Han would say and do nothing.

Leia remembered a story her mum had told her on how she had known she would commit to her dad. They could sit together, in silence, her mum had said, as she stroked Leia’s hair. He would peel a sea prune and offer it to me. I was so tired some days from my duties. And Bail, generous, warm, Bail, would sit by my side, and no words were needed.

Young Leia had been confused. Of course we could talk, her mum had laughed. We could talk for hours on so many things. But we never _had_ to fill the silence. We could work side by side, or rest side by side, without words, and love each other. To speak was love. To sit in silence was love. There was no fear the other would flit away.

The ocean is the element of love, the Tribe said. She dances every night with her lover, the Moon, and they have done so since the beginning of time.

Leia bent on the rocking ship beneath the Moon, to the sound of Han’s fingers over the engine, the sails, his hums and chuckles at Chewie, and thought that this was peace.

  
The Winter Solstice was drawing nearer. Leia could count the days through the face of the Moon, and her menstrual cycle, but she could also see things changing. Wolves with the eyes full of ancient knowledge, the size of bears, wandered through the woods. She heard whispers in the darkness of old things. The Spirits are all around us, Obi Wan said, they are in the rocks and the trees and water, and we forget this at our peril. The Avatar is the balance between these two worlds, which draw ever closer at the Solstices. She no longer bent every night of their voyage.

Sometimes she would sit next to Han, and he would shell some nuts for her to nibble on. She would cuddle in Chewie’s enthusiastic hugs and ask Han about how the Falcon worked. The engine would make awful noises occasionally, and they would work together to fix it. He would ask her questions, if she was willing, on bending, on her Tribe. They argued comfortably over their opinions. Sometimes, she would fall asleep on the deck, and Han had carried her down to the hold to her sleeping bag.

This is a dance, also, Leia thought.

The Falcon docked in the marshland of Vodran. Vodran looked an ugly scar on the Earth Kingdom. All the grasses had been torched. What trees there had been were blackened stumps. Sickly-looking herons fluttered amongst the straw and thatch houses. The Fire Nation had done this, Leia thought. Even though the War was bleeding the Fire Nation dry as well, they had burnt this land. For no other reason than they could. They wanted these people to suffer for their refusal to bend. There, a young woman with fair skin, almond eyes, and straight black hair cut to her chin ran to them. “You’re the Avatar!” she cried, “Listen, you need to help us. Omi, the Spirit of these marshes…she's been taken! Oh, I’m Lina Graf by the way. You’re very cute!”

She addressed this to Leia. Leia didn’t miss how Han’s ears went red, though his face didn’t change.

“How is that possible?” Obi Wan said.

“Omi has a physical body – she was born from the love of the Moon and the Ocean, all that stuff,” Lina said. “There’s a Fire Nation facility further down the river… Please, all the fish and plants have begun to die.”

Leia was calm for much of their break-in to the facility. She was calm when a skull-faced man who called himself Tarkin found her and dragged her into a prison cell. She was calm when her friends found her and they were forced to dive into a trash compactor. She was calm when they discovered that Omi was some kind of seven-tentacled monster with a single eye stalk and a maw of teeth trapped inside.

“Cassian, waterbend it or something!” she screamed, the moment Omi grabbed Han and pulled him under. Leia let out a strangled noise, angrily forcing back tears.

Then the tentacles grabbed her and Luke.

In the water, Leia saw Omi’s huge red eye blink as she looked at them. The Spirit held them loosely, as they gasped and choked. There was something like curiosity in that otherworldly gaze.

 _Forest burners...water killers…_ Omi rumbled. The twins shook their heads frantically. _Yes..._ Omi insisted. _Pa_ _rt of It, these twins…crush the skull-man within my jaws...water...blessings..._

Then, **_Mother._**

And Leia knew, or thought she did, as the Spirit released all three of them. “Break the windows,” she said, spitting out the filthy water, “We need to let the Moonlight in!”

Leia pulled Han to his feet as Luke, Obi Wan and Cassian, smashed the windows with any garbage they could grab. Lina grabbed a large hunk of broken metal, and with remarkable strength, shattered one of the blacked-out windows. Glass rained down. Three more hits from her friends. And there, the full Moon of the Winter Solstice. The silver light pooled over Han’s face, as he opened his eyes and coughed and sputtered. “Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” he said.

And Leia knew, then, as Omi rose up, the water exploding through the facility, that Han had always been watching her.

Omi raged. She swept through the facility, flinging any who stumbled into her path. In the chaos, Leia saw Tarkin's eyes widen, before he and his retinue disappeared into the mists. Leia didn't linger on what his aims had been. At first, it felt like victory.

Then the Spirit descended on Vodran. The red eye glowed in the darkness as it took in the desolation. Her rage was terrible to behold. The marsh water began to rise up in terrible waves. The townspeople screamed. "Stop!" Leia yelled, as she and Luke chased after her, "Stop, they didn't cause this!"

But what was the reason of mortals to a Spirit? Omi didn't even look at them. I'm the Avatar, Leia thought, and I have no patience and no spirituality. Then she saw Luke dip his fingers into the water. In his hands were hundreds of smooth pearls. No, not pearls. Fish eggs.

"Great Omi!" he called. "Do you see these? I know your land has been destroyed... but the creatures in it are resilient! These eggs prove it! One day, it will grow back!"

One day, her people would rebuild. A great tentacle rose from the water and touched Luke's palms. The eggs slid smoothly through the mottled skin. Then, in the Moonlight, the Spirit's form began to shimmer. The teeth retracted. The tentacles grew thinner, more diaphanous. The redness of the eye faded, leaving an eye black as a marble. Omi gave one large, slow blink. She sank into the water and was gone. 

As the waters receded, they heard the townspeople running towards them. Lina and the rest of Vodran were yelling thanks. But Luke's eyes were fixed on something else. In the water, reeds were blooming, tall as Leia. "I never knew the Spirits could make things grow," he breathed.

It was something, Leia thought. It was not enough, but it was something.

It felt as though she and Luke had left something behind in that water. As Leia bent beneath the Moonlight, she felt something beyond curl around her. The Avatar, Obi Wan had said, is the bridge between this world and the Spirit World. The Avatar can travel more easily between them in a way that most cannot.

Perhaps, here on the deck of the Falcon, this was one of those thin spaces. For how can Leia explain, when she turns, water shimmering between her fingertips, the way Han looks at her, in that strange, dream-like world?

This is a dance, Leia knew. One day, many things would come crashing down – her grudge to her parents, her fears, being the Avatar, her guilt, whatever this was. One day Han would leave, when they reached the North Pole. There was no point in ever drawing closer.

But she can dance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lina Graf appears in the Star Wars Adventures spin-off comic, Tales from Vader's Castle - highly recommend for anyone who wants to see SW lean into some wacky horror, and occasionally, actual horror. She also appears in some of the SW's children's books. 
> 
> If you didn't figure it out, Omi is the trash compactor monster in A New Hope. She was given a name and sex in "From A Certain Point of View", where it turns out she's also Force-Sensitive??? The quality of that anthology varies wildly, but I really liked Omi's short story, "The Baptist" by Nnedi Okorafor. I just like when SW gets weird.


	7. Book One: Hope VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story Cassian tells in this chapter is from raisindeatre's ATLA fanfic "and you feel your heart (taking root in your body), which was itself lifted from Catherynne Valente "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making." The fanfic is excellent and so is the novel! 
> 
> If you're reading this fanfic still, I appreciate you.

Tarkin sat placidly, as Admiral Tagge blustered, red-faced, in front of him. "Absolutely not. First, the Death Star, and now _this._ This stronghold guards the Western corner of the Earth Kingdom. We start draining its troops, and we move ever closer to losing Mandalore, Lothal, Vodran, Kafrene -"

"I do not need an extensive list of Earth Kingdom territories," Tarkin snapped. Vision. That was what Tagge lacked. A cautious career man, comfortable in his graphs and charts. Always fretting over the number of troops on the enemy side.

"Perhaps you do," Tagge bit back, "Your Death Star, the mission North, is all a vanity project. My men are fighting a real war, Tarkin, and you'd do well to remember that."

The man folded his hands behind his back and strode towards the battlements. In the distance, Tarkin heard the call of a messenger hawk. He lifted his cup to his lips and hid a satisfied smile. The hawk alighted on the dark stone. Tagge pulled a scroll from the canister strapped to its back. The redness spread from his cheeks to his ears. "My, a message from the Fire Lord himself?" Tarkin said.

Through gritted-teeth, Tagge said, "The Fire Lord has directly ordered me to provide the manpower and supplies for your...expedition."

Tarkin set the cup down. "Wonderful."

As he stood to return to the guest quarters, Tagge spoke up. "And Vader is in agreement with your plan? I thought he and those Jedi were fervent Spiritualists."

Tarkin paused. Vader...it reminded him of the Avatar, one half of the Avatar. That face... Naboo, he had thought, but why? Curious. But no matter. The Avatar was heading North as well. If he stumbled upon them, all the better. The Avatar was a beacon of hope to the flagging armies and rebels. Hearts and minds, that was Tagge's biggest weakness. Vader and the Fire Lord understood the power of fear in keeping populations in control.

Tarkin's eyes tracked upwards towards the thin sliver of the Moon. "Times change, Admiral. The old fires have died. A new age of man is on the horizon."

Jyn frowned as she looked out at the clear blue water in front of her. Not a single sign of the Avatar. It had been weeks, ever since the embarrassment at Kafrene. Frustrated, she turned back to look at the ship, black as –

She forced her thoughts away. Bodhi was sniffing the air. "There's a storm coming."

"Don't be ridiculous. There isn't a cloud in sight."

Bodhi shook his head. "Jyn, I've worked on ships for a long time. There's a storm coming from the North. We'll need to alter our course."

"The Avatar is going north!" Jyn yelled, her inner fire blazing. _Trust the Spirits._ How she hated that phrase.

"Yes, but all of us will be in danger!"

"And what about it? The safety of the crew doesn't matter! The Avatar is all that's important!"

She stalked away into her quarters, as the crew watched her with ugly looks.

Luke could tell Cassian was irritated that their progress north wasn't going as quickly as possible. It seemed along the course of the river were so many settlements in need of help, from mysterious spirits, to rambunctious freedom fighters, to a nasty tribe on their way to some big divide or something (Leia still hadn't forgiven him for trying to help the last one). Cassian had quarrelled with them over this, but they had stubbornly held their ground.

These stops were the right things to do. He and Leia were the Avatar. They were supposed to be bringing balance back into the world, and weren't these signs of disarray? Weren't these signs that they should have started sooner?

They would end the War. And then… he supposed Leia and Cassian would return to the South Pole, and Han would be long gone, and who knew what Ben wanted, and he…

Luke didn't think he would forget the smell of burnt flesh for a long time.

They had found a small fishing village to restock for coal. There, an olive-skinned woman with hair dyed an improbable yellow had immediately accosted them. Luke had no idea what had dragged the woman to them, until he saw the pale whalebone jewellery hanging from her Earth Kingdom clothes. Spitting in Basic and the Southern Tongue, she began to harangue them, demanding that they stop the storm that was on the horizon. "Well, we don't know how to bend something like that yet," Leia was insisting. " _Por favor, temenos que –_ "

"Your Highness," the woman's voice dripped with condescension, "Why, of course you don't! You've been off sitting pretty in the South Pole, while your brothers and sisters die and flee! You turned your back on the world! Here you are, happily buying supplies for your grand adventure – at least show some grief for what we've lost!"

Luke swallowed.

"We're going North right now to train -"

"Oh, North. What good has our sister tribe done for us? They sit behind their walls and let us _starve_! Where were they when Fest was destroyed? When Alderaan was ravaged? Where were _you_?"

"Don't speak to them like that," Cassian snapped, "Just because they can't solve your fishing troubles -"

"My fishing troubles? Oh, is what you think this is all about? Did I imagine the last nineteen years of war and suffering? And the years of fighting before that?" the woman demanded. "The Avatar has let thousands of innocent people die! I lost my wife to the Southern Raiders ten years ago! Does that matter to you, waterbender? I thought our Tribe stuck together! Neither of you are fit to be the Avatar!"

Without thinking, Luke was climbing aboard Artoo. The polar bear dog gave a long, sad howl, and bolted. He heard Leia yelling, but he was already disappearing into the mountains.

The storm was raging outside the ship as Bodhi walked through the dark corridors. When he had tried to speak to Jyn, she had yelled that they were powering through. "Jyn, please," he had pleaded.

"If you're so eager to turn back, run away to your family!" she had snapped. Then her face had paled, and she had hurried away. He had tried rapping on her door and explaining that he wasn't upset – well, maybe he was, but he didn't want her to know that – but she'd ignored him.

Now he wandered. He could hear some of the officers arguing. "Who does Jyn think she is?"

Before he could stop himself (remind himself that he owed no one, least of all Fire Nation soldiers, an explanation), Bodhi said, "Do you really want to know?"

The officers started. Bodhi had always stood out amongst them: he was the only person here from the Earth Kingdom. He still remembered the day, as Jedha had been occupied, that he realised that he could not help to feed his family. All it would take was to sell over a piece of his soul, and enlist in the Fire Nation forces willingly. The stick and the carrot, that was the Fire Nation way. And his family had been so hungry. Then he had been assigned as a guard at the facility Galen worked at, and everything had become harder to ignore. There was a part of him that knew he ought to despise these men (despise Jyn, despise Galen).

There was another that knew what these men looked like laughing, and drinking, and singing during music night, and mourning the loss of their loved ones. He envied their ease as much as he hated it. It was _easy_ for them, wasn't it?

Everything felt blurry to Bodhi sometimes.

_You can make it right, Bodhi._

Shaking his head, he sat down in the circle. "Today was the day Jyn's mother was killed. It's also the day she was exiled, five years exactly."

"That's an awful coincidence," the head officer said.

"It's not a coincidence."

Bodhi could still remember those awful yellow eyes glittering beneath the robe. The way the fire blazed in the room as that withered old man had watched as Galen, Jyn, and the other scientists were brought before him. Jyn, only sixteen, pale and drawn, clutching her father's arm. She was so small, yet she stood there, her chin raised, and looked the Fire Lord in his horrible eyes.

"After Galen became part of the Weapons Department, he and Jyn were forbidden from interacting except at the request of the Fire Lord. Everything they passed between each other was under inspection. Director Krennic and the Fire Lord felt that it would be sufficient motivation for Galen to work harder – that he would be allowed to see his daughter once the Fire Lord was pleased," Bodhi explained, his voice growing sure and steady as he told a story he knew by heart. "Jyn's only connection to her family was under the control of the actions of two men."

He remembered when Galen had suggested, after introducing them, that he befriend his daughter when he was off-duty. He remembered when Galen began to pass him information, that he would give to Jyn to pass to Saw Gerrera when she was allowed by her keepers to visit the Earth Kingdom.

_Anything you're not changing, Bodhi, you're choosing._

"Jyn only spoke to her father face-to-face a handful of times in eight years. She grew up alone in the Fire Nation, waiting for the day her family would be reunited."

"She had you, though, right? You're her friend," another officer said.

"Yes, but I'm not family." Bodhi frowned, uncertain why the statement bothered him. "And then, the Fire Lord summoned them before him."

The officers watched him, blue, green, and hazel eyes glittering in the candlelight. Where was his dark-eyed own? "He felt that Galen's progress was not enough. The Fire Nation had still not won the War. He said that Galen needed more motivation, and the only way to do that was through loss."

"His daughter…"

"Yes. The Fire Lord ordered that Jyn be exiled. She would only be permitted to return when the Fire Lord was satisfied with Galen's work."

And he remembered how Galen had fallen on the floor and prostrated himself. _Please, not my daughter. I have lost everything today already, do not make me do so again! I am your loyal servant!_

And the Fire Lord had yelled, _do not grovel!_

And Jyn, the one and only time he had ever seen her cry, had begged. _Please, my father is old and tired! You cannot do this! You horrible old man!_

And the Fire Lord had raised his hand. And Jyn had screamed and thrashed on the floor as lightning coursed through her body.

_Silence, girl! You are the tool through which your father will learn obedience!_

It had been weeks before Jyn had awoken properly onboard the ship, dizzy and weakened. They were miles from the Fire Nation by then.

"Then this quest for the Avatar?"

"I think…" Bodhi said slowly, "Well if the Fire Lord has the Avatar, then the War's as good as done…right? And he wouldn't need Galen anymore."

"And then her life will finally go back to normal."

Could it though? What would it mean for the world if the Avatar was in the Fire Nation's possession? Sometimes Bodhi felt as though his messages to Galen were to a dead person, and it was only a ghost who communicated back.

Jedha was already gone.

Leia clung to Cassian's back as the rain lashed down on them. Kay struggled as he climbed the rocky cliffs. She had always loved thunderstorms, so infinitely rare and precious in the Poles. In a communal life, there was little that truly belonged to her, more so as the Chief's daughter. The independent fury of the lightning, far off in the distance, had been hers and hers alone. But now the rain was coming down in harsh sleets that felt as piercing as the woman, Evaan's, reprisal.

She had always done what was best for her people, hadn't she? From the moment her mother had held her in her arms on her Name Day and declared Leia was her child out of love, she had understood her duty. Leia had read every scroll, what had not been destroyed in the raids, on their trading partners and allies. She had learnt how to speak as many tongues as Bail and Breha knew. She knew to write her letters, and had penned many to beg for aid, to offer what little their Tribe had left, to give mercy to refugees. And like any Tribesperson, she knew to hunt with spear and dagger, to skin any creature, to build a canoe, tent, and igloo, to find food and shelter, to sing the songs for the Spirits and ancestors.

There were other lessons, too.

How to hide and lie very still in the snowdrift when the black snow began to fall. _You must not leave,_ her father whispered, _you must stay here and make no sound._

Listening to the screams and bursts of fire in the distance. Her Aunts, Tia and Rouge and Celia, had never returned after one raid. Their bodies had been black and flaking when they were swallowed by the sea. And more waterbenders had been gone.

_Let me fight!_ She had demanded once, at sixteen. She had clutched her spear, covered in blood, from her Challenge of the Body to prove herself future Chief. Leia had clambered through the treacherous leopard seal caves of Appenza to find a moonstone, as her mother before her. She had been lucky to escape whole, unlike Breha, who had been scarred from chin to hip, lost a lung, and damaged her uterus permanently.

The headiness of the kill had filled her with a fury. It was cowardly, to hide. So what if her lessons were haphazard and clumsy? (It was years later, when she saw the prison for the Earthbenders on Lothal, that Leia had understood no amount of honour could heal shame and suffering.)

Her parents had only ever let her play at Rebel, penning letters and meeting with dreamy Amilyn from Galatea and arrogant Chassellon for trade negotiation, until their resources had dried up. Captain Antilles was gone. Ress Batten was gone. Off helping refugees and sailing the fleet into battle. Cassian had been the last Southern Waterbender, and they had let him be a Rebel. Leia wasn't stupid. She saw the hunted look in his eyes and knew that Cassian had not been on mercy missions. Kier, her first love, was dead. Why not she?

If they had told her so much earlier, instead of locking her away like a precious jewel, could she have done something for the world? Or had it been right for her to look inward, as the Northern people had done, to hold together what she could?

In every town and city, Leia had searched for her Tribespeople. She knew some had fled the Pole to become refugees. To see the scorn in Evaan's eyes had felt like a brand. She remembered a time when she had tried to sneak refugees from Wohbani to Alderaan, and doomed a mercy mission her father had been planning.

She was their leader – if there was not some clause that the Avatar could not lead – and this was what she had done. It sat heavy around her neck.

Leia pressed her face into Cassian's back, and told herself that she was crying from the cold, and not guilt.

Cassian and Leia found Luke in a cave. He was curled up, next to Artoo, head in his hands. "Luke," Leia breathed, sliding off Kay. She threw herself into his arms, while Cassian tried to shake the water out of his clothes. "Luke, why did you run?"

"She's right, Leia," Luke said miserably. "Ben was saying that most Avatars start training when they're sixteen years old. We're three years late and now there's a weapon, and the comet, and…"

"Luke, it might not have changed anything -"

"They would be alive!"

Leia froze, her hands on Luke's shoulders. Her face crumpled. "Oh, Luke…"

"Why didn't anyone _tell_ us sooner?"

"I don't know!" Leia cried back, "Do you think that I'm not asking myself why my parents lied to me? Do you think I'm not thinking about all those that are dead in the Southern Tribe? In the world?"

She whirled to look at him. "Cassian, do you know -"

"Do you know the story of the girl and the tiger-shark?" Cassian asked. His mother had only told him the story once, but it had always stayed with Cassian. In the dark quiet nights, as he thought of all he had done, it sang in his head.

The faces, not all Fire Nation, swam before him.

Luke and Leia shook their heads, as Cassian sat down in front of them. "The girl in the story has never had to hunt, or fish, because she lives on fruits and berries. But one winter, she can find nothing to eat. She doesn't want to hunt, to take another creatures life. But she is starving. The winter is long. She takes a net down to the water and waits."

The twins' faces are barely visible in the dim light. "It's easier than she thinks, catching a fish. The net snags, and inside it a bright fat fish. She eats it then and there, on the ice, next to the sea.

"She cries as she eats. This is the first time she has ever killed, and the guilt is unbearable. But the hunger is stronger than the guilt, so she eats the whole thing, until there are only bones. When she's finished, she sees a shadow moving under the water, coming to the edge of the ice. It is a tiger-shark, and it watches her with its black marble eyes. 'Please,' she says, 'Don't eat me. I'm sorry I ate the fish.'

"'Why are you sorry?' the shark replies. 'I eat fish. That's what fish are for.'

"And what of little girls?' she asks, and the shark smiles at her. 'Some of them.'

"The shark keeps swimming back and forth, endlessly, and she says to it, 'Please stop. You are making me dizzy with all your swimming.'"

"'I can't stop,' the shark tells her. 'If I stop, I will sink and die. That's the way I'm made. I have to keep going, always, and even when I get where I'm going, I'll have to keep on. That's living.'

"'But I'm not a shark,' she whispers, and the shark shrugs in a way that is strangely human. 'Aren't you?'

"The girl thinks for a long while, her eyes following the shark. 'Maybe I am,' she says softly. 'I have to keep going too, don't I?'"

"'Yes.'

"'I have to keep going, so that I can keep going after that, forever and ever.'

"'Not forever.'

"'Why haven't you eaten me, shark? I ate the fish; I ought to be eaten.'

"'It doesn't work like that.'

"'But you're a shark. Eating is what you do.'

"'No. I swim. I roar. I race. I sleep. I dream. I know what the ocean looks like from underneath, all her dark places. And sometimes I follow sorrow when it bleeds into the water; track unhappiness over miles and miles of cold sea. Sometimes it leads me to shipwrecks; sometimes it leads me to messages in bottles; and sometimes, it leads me to girls shivering on the ice, who should know better than to mourn over fish.'"

"'The girl has no words to this. 'We all just keep moving, love. We keep moving until we stop.' Then the shark dives, sending sudden, heavy swell that soaks the girl, and when she rubs the water from her eyes, it's gone.'"

The twins are quiet. Then Luke said, "That's a horrible story."

"But it's true," Cassian said, "We have to keep moving. Some things are lost to us forever. We can only go forward, or we'll drown."

The twins were quiet. And then Luke was crying, great heaving sobs. Leia sniffled next to him. It was a horrible, awful sound. Luke cried, and Leia held him, as the storm began to cease.

Moved, Cassian awkwardly held both their hands until they could only manage wet hiccups.

"I think I needed that," Luke said, "I think I needed to finally let myself feel that."

Leia took his hand, and pulled him to his feet. "And then we have to keep going," she said, "And make it worthwhile."

(Much later, in the darkness of the hold they slept soundlessly instead of fitfully as they often did. Cassian listened to the river, and wondered if he could do the same.)

When they returned to the shore, Evaan was still there. Kay and Artoo dropped a dozen bright, fat fish they had caught in the shallow atolls around the cave. The Water Tribe woman stared at them, and then back at Leia. Something like guilt crossed her face, but no apology came. She only clutched the fish tightly to her chest.

Leia did not expect forgiveness from the other woman. She did not deserve it, yet, perhaps.

From her pack she pulled a necklace of silvery moonstones, plucked from the cold polar waters beneath Appenza. Her birth-right. Evaan's face paled. "Princess, I cannot -"

"As the Avatar, I cannot spend my time helping our people with the War," Leia said, "But I can ask others to go in my stead. My mother says there are Alderaan refugees on Naboo – and there are rebels on Naboo too, who could help us with food and protection. Look for Moteé."

"I will tell them the Avatar sent me," Evaan whispered, cradling the necklace in her hands.

"No," Leia said. She thought of Moteé's bright hope against Evaan's dark cynicism. What a pair they would make. "Tell our people that Alderaan has found them again. We survive, always."

As they sailed away, Leia thought her mother might have a bit of a fit that she'd – temporarily – given away the treasure. But she thought she would have understood, too. She fingered Moteé's silvery wings, and hoped.

Jyn sat in her quarters, tracing the portrait of her parents. Their hands on her shoulders. The soft black sand of Lah'mu… She was smiling in it, her hair in two thick braids. She wondered what she looked like now.

_Never change, Stardust._

Her thoughts were interrupted when the entire ship vibrated with a great crash. Jyn sprinted out of her quarters onto the deck. The top of the ship was on fire. Squinting in the downpour, she saw a motionless figure dangling. "The helmsmen!"

Before any of her crew could stop her, Jyn had leapt for the ladder. The rungs were slick from the rain. She could barely see. Grasping madly in the dark, Jyn found the warmth of a human hand. Jyn heaved the large man onto her shoulder. She took a step down and slipped.

A hand grabbed her ankle and placed it back onto the ladder. She looked down. One of her officers was there. He nodded at her, a smile twitching on his sour lips. Together, they brought the helmsmen down. "Set course into the eye of the storm!" Jyn ordered.

It was a struggle. Waves sloshed over deck as the boat shook like a bucking ostrich-horse. Jyn grabbed Bodhi's hand, grounding him to her side. He flashed panicked eyes at her. Would she die here, she thought, and join her mother somewhere in the ocean, doomed eternally?

Then the ship burst into a spot of blinding sunlight. The sea was calm. Jyn shook the water out of her hair and sucked in a deep breath. "What now, Captain?" her head officer asked.

Jyn touched the kyber necklace. She remembered the last time she had ever seen her mother's face, alive and breathing. "Head to shore once the storm ends," she said softly, "We need to repair the ship and get the helmsmen medical attention. We can resume our search for the Avatar afterwards."

There was a great sigh of relief from the crew. Jyn tasted something acid in her mouth, that she didn't wish to name. As the crew filtered off the deck, she and Bodhi remained.

"I'm sorry for what I said," she murmured, "It…it was wrong of me to say."

"It's alright," Bodhi stammered, clearly taken aback. The taste was stronger now.

"No," Jyn shook her head. "No, it's not alright. I should never…"

"Let's stop before you hurt yourself," Bodhi said lightly, "Let's get something to eat. It's cold out."

Jyn did not think that was enough, but she let him lead her back into the ship.

_Coda._

Cassian groaned as Kay finally, _finally_ brought back his waterskin, filled with water. They had been forced to dock the Falcon after every one of them, except for Luke, had fallen ill. Thrice-cursed Storm. Luke had disappeared hours ago with Artoo to try and find a village for medicine. In the meantime, Cassian, as the least delirious with fever, was trying to care for everyone around him. The fever was making him crabby, he knew. They were so close to a Fire Nation stronghold. And Erso was still hunting them. He had a bad feeling...

Cassian shook his head. As long as Luke stayed away from the stronghold, all would be well. "Why am I the one in charge," he grumbled, annoyed at his own fretting.

"No, no, Cody is in charge," a delirious Obi Wan slurred nonsense from under the blankets, "Ten hut Cody! Chop chop! Forward march!"

"Cassian is in charge because he's _handsooomeee_." Leia was clutching a defeated Threepio like a hot water bottle. "If he wasn't so _angstyyyy_."

"What about _me_ , Ms Princess Your Worship Water Tribe," Solo slurred. 

Annoyed, Cassian thrust the waterskin at Obi Wan for him to heat it up. "How dare you shoot at me!" Obi Wan was ranting. "That is incredibly rude!"

But he did manage to produce some faint heat that warmed up the water. Cassian staggered towards the food supplies, searching for the lentils. He collapsed somewhere by the nuts.

When he came to, there was something in his mouth. Something that was _moving._

"Is this," Obi Wan said very slowly, sounding much more coherent, "A _frog_ in my mouth?"

Cassian gagged as the frogs bounded over the Falcon. "Get those things off my ship!" Solo yelled.

Luke was babbling something about a dark-skinned lady in an apothecary with goggles named Maz who'd told him that frog-sucking cured colds, and being captured – _captured?_ – by Admiral Tarkin, and then being rescued by a blue spirit Kestrel –

"You went near the stronghold?" Cassian demanded, moving Kay with his foot before the lizard could eat one of the frogs.

Luke scowled. "I was searching in the river for _your_ frogs - shut up, Han - when a patrol came by. I got captured. They chained me up in the stronghold. Tarkin happened to be there, and he started calling the shots. Then this blue-masked figure appeared... We had to fight our way out!"

"The Kestrel is a Water Tribe spirit," Leia said, as she grabbed one of the frogs, "Why would a Spirit intervene like that, and in the middle of nowhere?"

"Oh, you know…Spirit stuff… she was very skilled with her tonfas…"

Cassian narrowed his eyes. "The Kestrel is a male spirit."

"I mean, it's hard to tell with Spirits you know. Well, anyways…"

There was an odd expression on Luke's face.

In her quarters, Jyn looked at the portrait of her parents, and the Fire Nation flag pinned to the wall. She had never held much patriotism for her home nation, but she had also never taken down any of the decorations the ship had come with. Beneath the bed were her tonfas and the blue mask. There were hardly any bruises on her skin, not that it mattered with her armour on. She and the Avatar...when they had fought back to back... They had complimented each other. Jyn shook her head and immediately regretted it.

Her head was still ringing from where Tarkin's archers had shot her and knocked her out momentarily. Of course, the thrice-damned egomaniac had to invest in a whole fleet of archers. She was lucky the Avatar had not abandoned her to be discovered. 

_In another life…without a War… Do you think we could've been friends?_ The boy had asked, as she had come to. Jyn had blasted him. Watched him flee. 

The Fire Nation flag hung tauntingly overhead. She turned over in her bed, and looked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tagge appears in A New Hope as the Imperial who suggests the Rebels could destroy the Death Star. Evaan Verlaine appears in the 2015 Princess Leia comic series (she's depicted as white there which was...a choice given every other Alderaani we see is POC, so I changed that up), as Leia's close friend after initial hostility. 
> 
> Next chapter: fortunes are told, a bounty hunter is hired, and Jyn continues to make every wrong decision possible.


	8. Interlude: Fortunes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another little bonus chapter: if you're interested in reading about the team visiting a fortuneteller who is a surprise character, and a ton of Obi Wan angst, read on. If not, proceed to the next chapter which has also been posted.
> 
> Asterisks indicate dialogue taken from the episode "The Fortuneteller" from ATLA. Obi Wan's dialogue at the end about his future is inspired by a similar conversation he and Anakin have in the Legends novel, Labyrinth of Evil, by James Luceno. Inspiration for the village and the fortune-telling method in this chapter is taken from Kazakhstan.

Luke knew he hadn’t seen much of the world compared to most, but even _he_ knew fortunetellers were frauds. “Don’t worry!” the man said calmly, as he dodged another swipe from a rampaging platypus bear, “Our village’s fortuneteller predicted I would get home safely.”

“With all your bits and pieces attached?” Han yelled, lobbing a stone at the animal. The bear growled and tried to bite the man’s ear off. “Would you just run like a sane person?”

“Oh, you skeptics and your sanity,” the man laughed, ducking. Behind him, Luke heard Cassian mutter, “I say we leave him to die.”

“None of you are helping!” Luke called, running towards the _far_ too calm man. Planting his feet, he managed to earthbend out a sharp rock-face, blocking the bear from its prey. Fool or not, he wasn’t about to let the man die in front of him.

“Chewie, let’s finish this!”

Their own bear huffed, rising up on his hind legs. He let out a forest-shaking bellow. The platypus bear squeaked. Pacified, it scrambled away. Chewie gave a triumphant warble. “Yeah, yeah, don’t get cocky.” Han gave a disparaging look at the man. “You’re welcome.”

“Your assistance is appreciated,” he said serenely, “But everything was under control, just as Aunt Nu predicted.”

“Aunt Who?” Luke said.

“No, Aunt Nu. The fortuneteller, who reads the movements of the spirits in stones.”

Ben frowned suddenly, rubbing his greying beard. Han continued, “But you weren’t fine. Without us, you’d be dead!”

“But I’m not,” the man beamed. He produced a wrapped parcel from his pack. “And she said, if I was to meet any travelers, I should present them this.”

Luke accepted the package as the man disappeared off into towards the river. He opened the hide wrapping as Han muttered. It seemed to be a bundle of thin fabric or paper attached to long pieces of wood. Luke stared at the object in confusion. Leia appeared similarly stumped. “It’s an umbrella,” Ben said kindly, “It’s to protect you when it rains.”

“Of course,” Leia said, blatantly lying. “But it’s not…”

There was a large clap of thunder. Then, a sea’s worth of rain poured down. The group, already shivering in the winter weather, huddled immediately under the umbrella. “I think we should visit this fortuneteller,” Ben said cheerfully, “I have a very good feeling about it. Besides, we can trade for more food and information there.”

“Oh, did the spirits tell you that?” Han said under his breath.

“No, but I know enough that what she says about you will be amusing for me,” Ben said, sweet as honey. Luke stifled a laugh at Han’s expression.

  
The village of Alpheridies in the northwestern Earth Kingdom was remote. They had stopped the Falcon and hiked towards it, trading rides on Kay and Artoo. Luke patted his tired polar bear dog gratefully. It was no wonder the people here bred so many ostrich horses. They threaded their way through white circular tents and simple wood and thatch houses. Luke looked about curiously. More and more, he was finding that it was true about the Earth Kingdom – the diversity of his homeland was incredible. And he and Leia were meant to guide all these people towards balance.

“Not a ruler, not a redeemer,” Ben had said, “The Avatar is a teacher, a guide, between the natural world of the Spirits, and our own.”

Luke didn’t want to dwell on that too much. Wasn’t that Cassian’s story? He had to keep going, until the day a choice appeared. Luke lay on his belly on Artoo’s back, taking in these new people. They were tan skinned, with thick dark hair and almond-shaped eyes. The men wore trousers and shirts with a long robe thrown over them, in shades of Earth Kingdom brown and green. The women wore long dresses with vest or robes thrown over, heavily embroidered with thread, beads, or silver coins. The men and women both wore furred hats. Luke felt plain in his dusty cream shirt and trousers, and borrowed winter robes.

He would learn, he told himself. When the War was won, he would go to every corner. He had always liked the idea of meeting more people. But now he was fueled by responsibility, not childhood wanderlust. He stroked Artoo’s fur softly, and the dog keened a sound of loss.

The home of the fortuneteller was small. A young woman directed them to sit on the floor. Luke watched her converse quietly with someone behind a curtain. Then an old woman stepped out. The group sat up in shock. She was pale-skinned, and blue-eyed. She gave a closed smile at their expressions. “Well, who will be first?”

“Let’s get this over with,” Han said sourly. He got to his feet.

Aunt Nu raised an eyebrow. “*Your future is full of struggle and anguish, most of it self-inflicted.*”

“You didn’t even read my palm or do a ritual!”

“*I don’t need to. It’s written all over your face.*”

Han was left speechless. Luke noticed Ben was covering his mouth to snicker.

Aunt Nu waved a hand at the twins. “You two first, then.”

Exchanging a confused look, they trailed after her behind the curtain. Arranged on a cloth were forty-one small stones. The twins sat opposite the old woman. With one gnarled hand, she began to sort the stones. Her movements were a blur. She was chanting something in a low, sonorous voice. At last, she paused. Some of the stones were arranged in three rows. “My, my,” she said, her blue eyes shadowed, “I don’t think I have ever seen anything like that.”

She tapped the first column with her finger. “Your past…defined by chaos and separation, a great and terrible secret – _hush_ , child,” Aunt Nu said, as Leia made to speak, “A great conflict and struggle has shaped your present…” Her fingers drifted across the final row. “A battle awaits you, that will decide the balance of the world…beware summer’s end. Beware the child of summer. His destiny is tied to your own.”

There was a pause.

“Yes, we know that already,” Leia said, a note of embarrassment there Luke had never heard before, “But is there…anything about…love…”

“I knew you liked Han!” Luke hissed triumphantly.

Leia shoved him, “I do not!”

“And the midnight meetings?”

Leia was sputtering now. “How, how – how do you even know about that?”

Luke grinned in the way only an older brother could (he had no way of proving this, only that it made Leia’s eye twitch). “We share the same _soul_ , Leia. I know _everything_.”

Aunt Nu was staring at them with the oddest expression. “Just out of curiosity,” she said slowly, before Leia could strangle him, “You wouldn’t happen to have been born in spring? Say, specifically, the twenty-second day of the fifth month, right around the time Fire Lord Palpatine declared himself ruler of the World and your father mysteriously died?”

“Uh…yeah?”

“And your father was Anakin Skywalker?”

They nodded. “Did a Spirit tell you all that?” Luke asked excitedly.

“Oh, yes, yes. Right,” Aunt Nu said distractedly, “Love, that was what you wanted to know. Well, see, these stones…” She was pointing at the remaining mound not in the grid. “They say, hmm, trust in your heart and that destiny is a very funny thing and doesn’t really always make sense. Now send in the Water Tribe boy, would you?”

As they slipped out, baffled, Luke was almost certain he heard her mutter, “Oh, they’re _his_ , alright.”

  
“I feel a great romance for you. The woman you will give your heart to.” Aunt Nu paused for maximum impact. “I am told she is a very powerful bender. An unexpected choice, but one that will represent a new beginning. A new balance.”

Cassian glared down at the stones accusingly. “Fine, but is there anything in there about the _War_?”

Aunt Nu gave him a withering look. “You’ll die peacefully in your sleep at a ripe old age, is that satisfactory enough?”

“No!”

  
“To think you’d end up here, Jocasta,” Obi Wan said warmly. The young ones were busy getting supplies. This left him to sit at Jocasta’s front step, beside the old Jedi record-keeper.

Jocasta Nu gave a sardonic little smile, lighting a pipe. A heady clove-scent filled the evening air. “My grandniece – my assistant – unlike many of us, I never lost contact with my extended relatives. My sister had married a man here, and her descendants were willing to shelter me as such,” she said. Her pale eyes looked over him, “It’s certainly better than whatever dusty hole those children dug you out of.”

He trained his own eyes on the marketplace in front of them. He did not want to see what was there in Jocasta’s eyes. Master Yoda was gone, in exile. In those long moments in the desert night, it was possible to believe that he was dead, too. Obi Wan had always hoped there were some who had survived the War’s beginning, but survival was not an easy thing. Jocasta had dug her roots in here. How could he hold that against her? She had chosen life, and the Jedi, perhaps, had never truly understood what that meant.

He was the last Jedi. Even after everything, Obi Wan did not think he knew how to be anything different.

Jocasta said, “They’re Skywalker’s, aren’t they? Or I should say, Vader’s.”

Obi Wan looked at her, startled. “Nineteen years ago, I returned to the temple on Coruscant,” she explained, “I knew Palpatine would begin to target the earth, air, and waterbenders. I had to destroy the records we had. He was there. I recognized his bending forms, his power, the way he spoke. And the boy looks like him.”

“You’re lucky to be alive, especially as a non-bender,” he managed. It felt like she had torn open a raw wound. He did not ask what Vader had looked like. There were some things he was better without.

“He wanted me dead,” Jocasta said harshly. “There was no prophecy…we heard what we wanted to hear. We stole a child from his mother, and we, Palpatine, Anakin Skywalker himself, made _something_ … the Spirits don’t care for Chosen Ones.”

If he had taught Anakin better, of the difference between good and evil, if he had stopped him from being tempted by Palpatine’s lies… “Oh, Obi Wan,” Jocasta said softly, “You still haven’t figured it out, have you?”

He did not want to ask what she meant by that. Obi Wan could barely remember some days what it was like to have been Anakin’s trusted advisor, his friend, his brother. He clung to those memories, half-imagined, between the fighting and betrayal. He was a Jedi Knight. He had promised the world something.

In the desert darkness, as Maul had whispered, _he will avenge us_ , Obi Wan wondered if Anakin had ever felt like this. That there was no way out, no way back, so the only path was endlessly forward, into the darkness of the night, knowing one day it would swallow you whole?

“Old man.” Cassian had approached them. “We have everything. We should leave, unless you want your fortune told as well.”

The disgust in Cassian’s eyes had never entirely bothered him. Perhaps it ought to have. He smiled genially. “No, thank you. I already know what is in my future.”

Jocasta removed her pipe. “And what is that, traveler?”

He had had this conversation before. Obi Wan thought of a grey-haired man, dying in his arms beneath Maul’s blade. A dark-haired woman, screaming in pain as her babies were cut from belly, dead, now. A dark-skinned girl, turning away from him as they called her a traitor. The angry mouth of a pale-skinned woman he had always wanted to taste, dead now, he was certain. And Anakin, burning on Mustafar’s shore, in a state where death would have been mercy.

One day, he knew, Luke and Leia would have to strike their father down. And they would not forgive him for that.

“Infinite sadness,” he said, still smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit: Empire Day in the UK is not a thing anymore! Wookieepedia is a liar.  
> Luke and Leia have no official birthdate, other than being born two days after Empire Day. Coincidentally "Empire Day" is a real day in the UK (which sounds real colonialist to me...) and is on May 20, so I made Luke and Leia's birthdate May 22 in this fic. This actually works well because in ATLA, most earthbenders are born in spring (firebenders in summer, waterbenders in winter, and airbenders in autumn). It will probably never come up but I see Jyn's birthdate as being in the winter and Cassian's in the summer, to reinforce their yin-yang, mirror versions theming.


	9. Book One: Hope VII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We get a little glimpse of Corellia here - in order to account for Harrison Ford's glaring whiteness, I envision Corellia as being West Asian (specifically Armenia and Georgia). 
> 
> Enjoy a new chapter and the bonus chapter posted before this!

Jyn entered the seedy bar, shoving past the criminals and smugglers. The trail for the Avatar had gone cold. They were reaching the Northern end of the Earth Kingdom. There was only open water and hundreds of islands, from rocky crags to large Water Tribe settlements like Ryloth afterwards. It was a Polar Maze that the Avatar could hide easily in. It was slipping through her fingers, and that had found her here.

This bar represented the worst of the War: the open market for crime syndicates, piracy, and slavery. Aurodia Ventafoli, once personal songstress to Crimson Dawn, crooned in the background. Jyn saw Pykes and Black Suns speaking in the shadows, dead-eyed girls serving them. Some looked as young as twelve, but that did not stop the men. It never had. She had been twelve, once. She too, had been denied a childhood, given a girlhood of use for Saw’s Partisans. Jyn pushed the thought from her mind, holding the dagger so tightly she was sure it would slice her palm open.

“Jyn, I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Bodhi said from behind her. “He’s a _bounty hunter_. He might not even be here!”

“Just stick close to me,” she said, grabbing his arm and dragging him closer. Leaning against the bar was a man in dented and battered Mandalorian armour. Her information had been accurate. Jyn stepped in front of him. She could see the faint glimmer in the gap cut for his eyes.

“Boba Fett,” she said. The man tensed, his hand resting easily on a short blade strapped to his belt. “I need you to find someone for me.”

“I don’t freelance,” Fett said.

“We’ll make it worth your while,” Jyn said. “Your weight in gold.”

She could glean nothing from him as he considered. “Armour and weaponry included?”

Gritting her teeth, knowing that her coffers were running dangerously thin, Jyn nodded. Wordlessly, Fett walked out of the bar. They followed. A shirshu, a huge tracking animal was tethered outside, its eyeless face eerie in the gloom. Its only features were a mouth of sharp teeth, and a flared pink nose like a flower. “I need something with the scent.”

Jyn, with a strange reluctance, handed over the knife. Fett turned it over in his gloved hands. “Boyfriend run off?” he said.

“It’s not the man I’m after. It’s the two teenagers he’s travelling with.”

Fett didn’t respond, only holding the knife out in front of the shirshu’s nose. It sniffed and made a keening noise. “Get on.”

“I’m not getting on that,” Bodhi said, eyeing the shirshu’s venomous tongue.

“Bodhi, _come on_!” Jyn hoisted him on behind Fett, and then seated herself behind him.

She had days, maybe less. It had to be now.

Cassian pulled the hood of his cloak tighter over his head, both for security and for warmth. They had landed in Corellia, far to the North of the Earth Kingdom, to restock and refuel with what little money they had left. Solo had not been pleased. The city had been occupied since the early days of the War. Sitting atop mineral-rich mountains, and with a thriving industry building Earth Kingdom ships, it had been the perfect spot for the Fire Nation to invade. Now the air was an ugly grey colour, as large metal factories belched smoke into the air. Cassian skirted the alleyways of stone buildings along the river delta. Corellia perhaps had been beautiful once, with its pointed domes and arches and vaulted ceilings. But the scum of pollution was smeared over much of delicate tile-work.

At least they had made good progress, their only stop in a village with a fortune teller. Cassian knew she’d been a fraud. Really, being told he would fall in love with a powerful bender. That could be _anyone_.

Besides, Cassian didn’t have high hopes that he would live to see the end of the War.

(What the old firebender had said bothered him, though. He had declined to have his fortune told, insisting that he already knew what was in his future. When the fortune teller asked to know what it was, he had answered. “Infinite sadness,” he had said, still smiling.)

Shaking his head, he made towards the river bank. It surprised him, as he walked, how much Solo dressed like the Earth Kingdom people here. The same embroidered vest, the baggy and trousers with a thick cloth belt… He supposed Solo had some true Corellian blood in his veins. Perhaps he saw himself as somewhat Earth Kingdom. Cassian didn’t dwell on that.

In the cold, parts of the rivers had frozen. Cassian slid over it easily with some discreet bending, then darted into an alleyway. A tan-skinned woman was standing there, a beautiful headband with dangling metal coins around her long dark hair. Her heavily embroidered clothes were covered by a thick woollen cloak. A local, unlike those like Solo, who had Fire Nation blood in their veins. “Good, you came,” she said.

“Of course. What have you got for me?” Cassian said without preamble.

They moved deeper into the alleyway. “The rebels in Jedha…they’re saying that the Fire Nation’s focus on Jedha isn’t a coincidence.”

“Saw has a paranoia problem,” Cassian said.

The woman folded her arms. “I’m only telling you what I’ve been hearing. They say that the Holy Temple has been stripped clean of kyber. They say that they’re mining the kyber in the city and they’ve been taking hundreds of wagon-loads out.”

“Do they know why?”

She shook her head. “But we can guess, can’t we? They’re building something with it.”

Kyber. Death Star. The comet. What did it all mean?

Cassian ran the words over in his head as he filtered out of the city where he had told Kay to wait. He heard a twig a snap. Instantly, he bent a long stream of water out, letting it slide fluidly beneath his palms.

A huge brown beast burst out of the foliage. It had no eyes. All its features were concentrated in the spiky tendril bloom around its snout. Cassian had never seen anything so ugly before. Atop it was a Mandalorian in dirty green and yellow armour. He had a longbow, as well as wicked-looking sword. And behind him were Bodhi Rook and Jyn Erso.

“So, this is your boyfriend,” the Mandalorian said.

Cassian ran, ducking under the creature’s legs. Something sharp snapped into his neck.

He fell to the ground, limbs seizing up, paralyzed.

Cassian was trussed and thrown behind Jyn Erso. This was starting to become a habit. Within moments, Kay, hissing and spitting, was thrown there as well. “I don’t think he likes me,” Erso muttered. “Now, tell us where the Avatar is!”

The Mandalorian, who was watching with his arms folded, looked up at that.

“We separated. They’re long gone,” Cassian said. His limbs were stubbornly refusing to move. Just a finger. He concentrated on his right hand. Erso snorted, and began to rifle through his pack.

“The shirshu needs something those teenagers held,” the Mandalorian said. “Otherwise, you’re out of luck.”

“Jyn, maybe we should…”

Erso held his belongings in front of the beast’s nose. It sniffed and pawed through the contents, until it alighted on the waterskin. The old firebender. He had held Cassian’s waterskin. The beast keened. Erso jumped back on. Then they were leaping through the trees. The shirshu moved at an incredible pace. They could have travelled leagues to find him.

Erso grabbed hold of his belt to steady herself. Cassian had enough strength to lift his head slightly. The shadows under Erso’s eyes were even deeper than before. Her eyes were two green pits in her face. Cassian knew that face. He had worn it before. They were on the edge of the Earth Kingdom. Soon they would enter the Polar waters. Then they would be secure behind the great ice fortress of the Northern Water Tribe. She could fling herself against its white walls for the rest of her life, and still would never uncover its secrets.

Despite himself, Cassian asked, “Why are you doing this?”

At first, it seemed she hadn’t heard him. Then Erso said, in barely a whisper, “A bargain. The Avatar for my father.”

The thought dominated Cassian’s mind as they raced towards the group.

The shirshu smashed through the doors of the river village’s perfumery. They were in a medium-sized courtyard, with two large stone wells. Everyone in the group, pets included, was there, gaping at the sight before them. “That’s them!” Erso said, pointing towards Luke and Leia. Fett yanked the reins and drew shirshu nearer.

There was a great roar. Artoo and Chewbacca had thrown their full weight against the massive shirshu. Cassian and Kay slid off, hitting the ground heavily, as did Erso and Bodhi. The perfumery erupted into chaos.

Erso was sending powerful jets of fire at the twins. They were bending shields of water from the wells. Kenobi was bending the smoothest, sharpest waves of fire at the bounty hunter. Cassian had never been so grateful for him. The animals rampaged through the courtyard. Chewbacca and Artoo were trying to bite the shirshu. Bodhi and Solo were taking cover while Solo was flinging whatever he could get his hands on at the shirshu. Frantic customers ran about.

Cassian, who by now could feel his arms, wrenched his hands out of the ties. He dragged himself towards Kay and began to undo his ties. “Leia, get the dagger!” he yelled. “That’s how they’re tracking us!”

Leia’s eyes narrowed. She looked around, then whispered something in Luke’s ear. Together, she and Luke began to draw Erso towards one of the wells, throwing out tentacles of water to block her knife-like flames. Erso surged ever closer. The twins jumped onto the well’s lips. Leia blocked Erso’s strikes with two water-covered hands, freezing her hands solids. “Luke, now!”

Luke dropped, sweeping Erso straight into the well. “Together!”

With a hard thrust, the water exploded upwards. There was a beat.

Erso crashed onto the ground with a comical grunt.

Leia strode over, ripping the dagger off Erso’s belt. The firebender jumped back to her feet, throwing out of jet of fire that the twins dodged. Solo had reached Cassian by this point, and stuck something under his nose, as well as Kay’s. “Hey, Andor! Get up! That thing’s taken down Chewie!”

“It sees with its nose,” Cassian panted, “We need to overwhelm its senses.”

Solo snapped his fingers. He gestured towards the vats of perfume. Reluctantly, Cassian’s respect for him grew. Together, he and Solo began to drag the barrels into the courtyard. To his surprise, Bodhi joined them. “I don’t like bounty hunters funded by crime lords,” Bodhi said firmly. His jaw was set. He wore confidence well.

As the perfume pooled around Cassian’s ankles, he settled himself into wide-legged stance. Then he swept his arms upwards in wide arcs. The perfume rose in great waves, swirling around itself. For the first time, Cassian considered that his bending could be beautiful.

The perfume crashed down onto the shirshu.

It shrieked. The tongue lashed out, hitting the bounty hunter and sending him to the ground. It hit Erso. Kay, with a contemptuous sniff, knocked her aside with his tail. This quite inadvertently saved her life. The rampaging shirshu was stomping about wildly. It would leave her with a very nasty bruise, though.

Cassian let out a strange noise of relief.

“Nice work,” Solo said.

Caught off-guard, Cassian could only nod. “Let’s get out of here!” he said, banishing these thoughts, as the shrieking shirshu bolted into the forest.

He gave a single look back at Bodhi and Erso, before they fled to the Falcon.

“Bodhi,” Jyn said, once her head stopped rattling. “Did you get hit by the tongue too?”

“Oh, no,” Bodhi said from where he was lying next to her, “I just kinda panicked and needed a lie down.”

Jyn tried, unsuccessfully, to kick him.

In the seedy bar, a nervous-looking Fire Nation soldier approached the Mandalorian. "I'm not taking any more freelance work," Fett snapped.

"I think," the soldier said, avoiding the poisonous looks he was getting, "It might be worth your while."

"And how do you figure that?" Fett said, drawing the short blade at his hip.

"The job comes direct from Lord Vader." The bounty hunter stilled, the money in reach dawning on him. "It concerns...the Avatar..."


	10. Book One: Hope VIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of Obi Wan's dialogue is taken from the ATLA episode "The Deserter", when he explains the dangerous nature of fire as an element. The wording of the Chosen One propehcy is 100% inspired from the Game of Thrones/ASOIAF Azor Ahai prophecy (that whole series is a MESS but I found the magic and prophecies fascinating). 
> 
> The names of Cassian's sisters, Ysabel and Juana - who are OCs, are taken from family members of mine. No real world similarity otherwise!

Jyn scowled at the ceiling as she lay on her bed. They had been in Corellia for too many days, trying to come up with some kind of plan. The door creaked open.

“For the last time, I’m _not_ playing the lute for Music Night!”

“Um…it’s not that…”

Jyn looked up. Admiral Tarkin stood before her, a thin smile on his horrible face. “Ms Erso, so lovely to see you.”

“Admiral Tarkin, what a pleasure,” she bit out, inclining her head in respect. She felt exposed in her sleeping clothes. Her armour was a shield. Now she looked like a scared child. Perhaps she had never stopped being one.

“I’ll cut to the chase. I am requisitioning your crew and your ship. I am leading a battle of upmost importance against the Northern Water Tribe – one that will have … _lasting_ consequences for the war effort.”

“What? You can’t do that. This ship was granted to me by the Fire Lord, I need to -”

“Capture the Avatar? My dear girl, these orders come direct from the Fire Lord himself. Your childish little mission is a fool’s campaign, and he knows it as well as you do,” Tarkin said, the candlelight making him look positively skull-like. “You will not be returning to the Fire Nation except as the Fire Lord wills it.”

There was a person that was sitting in Jyn’s body, she thought, but it was not her. From very far away, Tarkin continued, “In addition, when I say crew…that includes your _companion_. We will need all hands on deck for this operation.”

“No!” Jyn yelled, leaping up from the bed. “No, Bodhi stays here! With me!”

“Jyn,” Bodhi said softly, “There’s nothing we can do. I’ll go.”

_Don’t leave me. Don’t you leave me as well…_

Her hand gripped the desk, white-knuckled. Tarkin’s eyes alighted on it, then skittered over to the tonfa lying next to it. Those cold eyes seemed to bore into them. Jyn tensed. Was he recalling the black-clad stranger with a blue mask? Was he recalling the stranger who had smashed through the ranks of his soldiers? She had hidden the mask well, she knew. The blue mask, shaped like the stylized face of a bird of prey, was safely locked beneath her bed. Her mother had loved that mask when they went to the theatre.

“I didn’t know you were skilled in non-bending combat,” Tarkin said softly, tracing a hand over the sleek brown wood.

“I’m not,” Jyn heard herself saying, “Those are antiques. I was polishing them.”

“Hmm. Have you ever heard of the Kestrel, Ms Erso?”

Calmly, Jyn sat herself back down on the bed. “I’ve seen the wanted posters. I hope that he is caught soon.”

“Yes,” Tarkin said as he walked from the room, “I think justice will catch up with her shortly. You have two hours to vacate the ship, Ms Erso.”

  
The Falcon had docked in the shallow seas of Ilum, a cluster of frigid, rocky islands full of deep cave networks. At first, Solo had suggested they make camp on the remains of Ryloth, once a thriving centre for the Northern Tribe. It had been devastated in the Separatist Wars, and the Fire Nation had eaten the rest. What Tribesmen that had not escaped had likely been enslaved or imprisoned. Leia and Cassian had taken one look at the devastated island, covered with rich moss, lichen, and scrub brushes, and said no immediately. The pain of their sister tribe was too raw. For the first time, Cassian considered that perhaps the North had lost as much as them. Was it better or worse that their pain was shared by so many?

The old firebender had recommended Ilum as a worthwhile spot as they progressed towards the Pole. “It is a very spiritual place, full of kyber,” he said, winking at a contrite Luke and Leia, “Perhaps it might improve your meditation.”

Cassian stirred the hot seaweed broth as he watched the twins sit cross-legged before the old firebender. Both of their eyes were squeezed tightly shut. He didn’t get the impression they were getting any closer towards enlightenment. Next to him, Solo was studying the map, a frustrated expression on his face. He was probably considering what to do with his reward, Cassian guessed. They were already nearing the end of the first month of the new year. It had been a longer journey than any of them had anticipated.

He hoped they got to the Pole soon. He hadn’t had an opportunity to send his intel to Bail after they had fled Corellia. It was information they desperately needed answers to.

The old firebender clapped his hands, and the twins immediately sunk into more relaxed poses. “You’re getting better, but you need to let go of your turbulent emotions. They prevent you from truly allowing yourself to access the wider spiritual energy around us.”

“Yeah, yeah, hokey magic and ancient religion, let’s eat,” Solo groused. He was definitely in a foul mood.

Cassian decided it was time to broach the subject. “You should teach the Avatar firebending,” Cassian said bluntly. “We have such little time to master four elements.”

“I agree,” Leia said. “Especially with everything Cassian’s been finding out. We’re progressing on our waterbending so quickly! With a master at the North Pole, we’ll be ready in a week. We need to get started on the others!”

“I do not think that is wise,” the old firebender said carefully. His eyes were downcast.

“Why not?” Luke demanded. “We’re the Avatar. It’s our destiny -”

“*Destiny?” the old firebender cried. “Neither of you have any discipline! Fire is not like water. It is a living thing.” The fire Cassian made was starting to surge. “*Without the bender, a rock will not throw itself! But fire will spread and destroy everything in its path, if one does not have the will to control it.* I will not train another in its destructive power, not another that is in such turmoil.”

“Another?” Leia said. “Who?”

He was silent. The fire began to dim. “We only want to understand, Ben.”

Then, “I had a student once. He was the most prodigious firebender I had ever seen. Greater and more powerful than even the Avatar in that element. He could bend not just regular fire, but blue, green, white. Not lightning, though,” he said with a small, sad smile, “He never had the control for it. But in fire – there were some who said that he was Sól, the Sun Spirit, come again. That when the red star bleeds, he will draw forth an inferno, and the darkness will flee at its light. His triumph will rebirth the world anew in a summer that will never end. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

“That was Vader, wasn’t it?” Luke said softly.

“Yes. I had trained him, ever since he was a little boy, and he was strong and wise. But he was…emotionally unstable. I could not have begun to grasp the turmoil that he hid from me. Perhaps that was my own fault. Perhaps I was too hard on him.” The old man’s eyes were far away, cloudy. “He had little control over himself, and thus, his inner fire. He was seduced by ever-greater power, and betrayed and murdered your father. *Fire is a difficult beast, and without control, it will consume everything in its path.* And now he is laying waste to the world in the Fire Lord’s name.”

Cassian said nothing, but he thought he knew a liar when he saw one. There was some piece of the story that didn’t quite fit, but he could not decipher what.

“Yes, but we’re _not_ emotionally unstable – shut up Han – so -”

“You are not ready!” The fire roared up in a great blaze, burning away all the tinder. “You are too weak!”

In the darkness, a glowing white light appeared where the twins had been sitting. Cassian scrambled backwards. The light solidified into a person. It was a bald, dark-skinned man dressed in a short dark blue tunic and breeches. Over this was thrown a great cloak of brilliant purple. He glared down at Kenobi. “So, you think that I’m weak.”

“Avatar Windu, it’s been a long time since we’ve had the pleasure…”

“Quiet, Master Kenobi. I have mastered the elements a thousand times in a thousand lifetimes. You _will_ teach the Avatar firebending, and I won’t be asking again.”

Kenobi bowed his head. “I will do it.”

“ _And_ you will tell them that -”

“Yes, yes, of course!” Kenobi was waving his hands frantically. The former Avatar gave a disgruntled look, before vanishing, leaving the confused, but excited twins behind.

The silence was broken by Han exclaiming, “What the _fuck_?”

  
In the frigid morning, the twins stood out on a rock as Kenobi presided over them. He had instructed the two to settle into wide squats and to practice controlling their breath. Cassian practiced his bending forms, arcing easily through water whips. From his vantage point, he didn’t think either of them was succeeding particularly well.

As the morning dragged on, Kenobi would come over and tut. He could clearly tell that the twins were slacking off, bored at the seemingly useless exercises. Guiltily, the pair returned to meditating. Finally, Kenobi returned from the Falcon with two scraps of cloth. “You will control the fire – prevent it from reaching the edges of the cloth. Perhaps you will respond better to a practical challenge.”

He handed this to them. Cassian, with little to do, removed his glove and began to trail his fingers through the frigid water, creating little streams. Solo was fishing beside him.

After a few minutes, “Ugh, this is _useless_! When are we going to use some real fire?”

The cloth in Leia’s hands had ignited into a great ball of fire.

“All because of that Vader. Toss yours to me?” Luke’s own cloth had ignited as well. Cassian observed warily as the twins began to bend the fire larger and larger.

“Watch out!” he yelled as they created a jet of flames.

“Stop nagging!” Leia yelled. The flames seemed to burst outwards in a wide arc. Cassian held his hands out, trying to shield his face –

His hands were on fire. Cassian choked as the ugly red burns covered his palms. He could smell burning flesh, like Ysabel, Juana… “Cassian! I’m so sorry!” Leia cried as she and Luke raced over.

It was taking all he could not to scream. His vision knifed. “What did you do?” Solo demanded, running over.

“It…it was an accident,” Luke stuttered.

“You _burned_ him!”

Kenobi had appeared, and he looked down at the twins. Then he turned his face away.

  
Cassian gasped as he thrust his hands into the frigid, salty ocean. He hissed in pain, and then stilled. A cool, luminous sensation was surrounding him. He looked down. His hands were glowing. The burns were healed.

“Healing. It’s an amazing waterbending ability.”

Kenobi had come up behind him, and settled himself down on an icy rock. “*I always wished to be blessed like you, free of this burning curse.*”

Healing. Cassian wondered why he, of all people, had this ability. These dark hands that had snuffed the life from so many. That could do nothing as his family had burned. “You could probably use it better than I could.”

It was the most honest Cassian had ever been. It was easy to be honest with Kenobi. He knew Cassian hated him, and he himself seemed utterly indifferent to his existence. There was a simplicity in being two people who just plain disliked each other.

Kenobi was watching him. “Firebenders must constantly walk a knife’s edge between humanity and savagery. Eventually, we are torn apart.”

Cassian looked, really looked, at the aged face of Obi Wan Kenobi. He saw his future, and reared away.

“We have to go!” Solo was yelling, running towards them. “There are Fire Nation scout ships coming! The wonder twins have gone after them!”

Cassian banished the thought. They raced towards the Falcon. The animals were already onboard. In the distance, Cassian saw the twins skating between the scout ships with waterbending. They dodged every burst, not throwing a single punch. The firebenders were burning their own ships.

Kenobi chuckled. “They’ve learnt something from me, at least. Always be the one with more self-control in the room.”

As the ships burnt, Luke and Leia skated over on a large wave. They hopped onto the ship, as Solo gunned the motor. The twins would not look at him. They disappeared into the hold. Frowning, Cassian followed them.

They were crouched against Artoo. Threepio was clucking over Leia, still in tears. “I’m never firebending again.”

“You’re going to have to,” Cassian said. How could he begrudge them their mistake? Perhaps it was a blessing he had been born in water.

“Ben tried to tell us we weren’t ready…and we didn’t listen.”

“It’s fine. I healed myself.”

“What? How?” Cassian sat down in front of them, uncorking his waterskin. He pulled out a glove of water and placed it on Luke’s burnt arm. He breathed, and thought of the memory of his mother’s smile.

The wound glowed, and then it was gone.

Leia shoved him. “You could do that and you never gave me any first aid growing up? What about when I got two fish hooks stuck in my thumb?”

“How-”

“The first,” Cassian said to Luke, “And only time Leia tried to fish.”

He knew the conversation was not over, but he would leave it for now. “What was the Fire Nation doing so far North?”

  
“What was the Fire Nation doing so far North? No doubt from the Southern Tribesmen drawing them to our shores!”

They sat in the large communal stepped pyramid in the centre of the Northern Water Tribe city. Before them were the Northern Tribe’s council. Cassian clenched his teeth very hard together. They had not travelled across the entire world for _this_. He could feel Leia vibrating next to him, and grasped her hand tightly. The old firebender was negotiating to let them stay. The Water Tribe takes care of its own, his mother had always said, you will never be alone in the Tribe. Always, the Tribe survives.

How twisted that could become.

To calm himself, he mechanically observed the differences between the North and South. More plants grew in the North; the Tribesmen were able to make deeper purple dyes, as well as dye their thickly braided hair. They used more polar-ox leathers, rather than seal-skins. Like the South, though, their Tribe too was led by women. Although their Chief was certainly being bullied by her father at this council. Their Chief was soft-faced woman in polar-leopard furs, her hair in two elaborate braids and dyed a vibrant green. A spear was laid across her lap, one that had clearly seen battle. Hera Syndulla, yes, that was her name.

The yelling man was her father, Cham, Cassian recalled. Beside Hera was her lover, Kanan, an olive-skinned man with long hair. A greyish polar leopard with orange eyes, the Chief's pet named Chopper, alternated between hissing at them, and trying to nuzzle his wheel-sized head into Hera's lap. Before he could continue his thoughts, Hera burst out, “This is the _Avatar_. And let me remind you that I have been directly involved in Earth Kingdom rebel cells. We will not turn away the Avatar’s friends, and we will train them.”

“They are Southerners,” Cham snapped, “We must focus on our own culture -”

“If I may, Father Cham,” another woman spoke. Her thick braids had been dyed blue. Numa? Cassian thought that was her name. Intriguingly, Mandalorian armour was strapped to her shoulders. “Are we not all one Tribe? Our blood is the same. Moreover, if the Separatist Wars taught us anything, it is that brothers and sisters are made through trust.”

“Soldiers that then -”

“Enough!” Hera snapped, slamming her staff on the ground. “Young Avatar, you want to learn?”

“More than anything,” Leia said.

Hera smiled briefly. “I like that attitude. There are some here who still know something of the Southern styles, and we will teach you the Northern ones.”

Cassian wished to speak, but he only bowed his head. Leia’s voice, shaking, “Thank you. Thank you, Chief Hera, you don’t -”

The woman raised her hand. “I do. I lost my mother on Ryloth. We lost so many when the Northern islands were taken. We’ll help you. You can vouch for your friend?”

“He is the last Southern Waterbender,” Leia whispered.

“Then he must be trained,” her lover spoke then. He had been watching Kenobi with strangely glassy eyes. “We can’t lose him, not like, not like -”

He ran his hands down his face. Hera touched his face gently. It was only when Kenobi came forward and said, “I felt it too, when it happened. The Purge…for so long…I thought I was the only one…”

Something was happening here that Cassian did not understand. Jedi… But the raw emotion on both men’s faces moved him. Who had these two men lost? Had they been part of the peacekeepers, Kenobi’s ancient Jedi conspiracy, during the Separatist Wars? Was that what their Order was?

Cassian didn’t know. But he felt a kinship in that loss, and was not sure how he liked it.

Bodhi sat nervously in front of Admiral Tarkin. The tea in front of him was disgusting, but still he sipped, fidgeting. He felt quite naked in only a simple red tunic, and trousers, and his goggles. “Do send along with condolences to Galen Erso at the death of his daughter. Such a horrible tragedy, that fire that engulfed the ship.”

“Oh. Yes.”

He sipped from his cup. “Pirates, no doubt,” Tarkin continued, smiling faintly.

“Yes. Definitely. We – we had a run-in with some earlier.”

“I see. Shame we lost the ship as well. Still, I’m sure we will be victorious in the end.”

Bodhi toasted the Admiral, repeating the usual nonsense platitudes on the invincibility of the Fire Lord. Then he scarpered as quickly as he could. He rounded a corner to find one of the helmeted Fire Nation soldiers, face shield up.

“He doesn’t suspect,” Bodhi whispered, trying to look natural. “Just stay hidden until we reach the North Pole.”

The soldier nodded, and disappeared into the ship.

Bodhi stepped outside, pulling on his cloak. The polar air was bracing, but it was not what stunned him. So many ships, black and spiky and belching black smoke. He could hear Tarkin issue an order.

“Set course for the Hoth glacier. We make for the Northern Water Tribe.”

A flare went up. Bodhi watched as more and more ships repeated. He watched, and saw the end of the world.

  
Cassian watched the teenager quiver before him. He wondered what was more embarrassing – that he was a twenty-six-year-old waterbending student, or that he was a twenty-six-year-old about to beat up someone who still had acne. The teenager bended several ice spikes at him. Cassian smoothly melted them. He pulled the water around him and sent the boy flying upwards, freezing him in a tower of ice.

Kanan, his waterbending master nodded approvingly. Nearby, Hera, who had come out to watch, laughed, polishing her spear. The last weeks had not been easy. Cassian had felt exposed, stripped bare, beneath the scrutiny of Master Kanan. Kanan had his own demons, and for each one he taxed Cassian and the twins harder than ever to succeed. Every lesson was to prove himself more than an angry, uncontrolled child. But when he was pleased, a kindness shone in his eyes that kept Cassian moving. Cassian felt half-savage in this city of shining ice, a waterbender from the ravaged South. A secret part of him still despised the North – where had they been when the South was destroyed, was the old refrain. Even now, as he moved through the forms as easy as breathing, there was a part of him that longed to know what pure Southern style bending looked like.

But he was the last. He had won over Master Kanan despite his age and anger, and he would learn.

“Is there anyone else who would like to spar with Cassian?”

A group of defeated students shook their heads. Kanan sighed, a small smirk on his lips. “Well, then the Avatar will have to spar with him.”

“Two against one is hardly fair,” Leia grinned. She and Luke slid into waterbending stances: her offense, and Luke defence.

Cassian smirked, and struck.

  
Leia watched as Han loaded the last of the gold onto the Falcon. “So, you got your reward and you’re just leaving, then?” Luke said, folding his arms. Cassian and Obi Wan had stayed in the house they had been given. I don’t need to see that coward’s face, Cassian had said.

Leia hated Han’s face in that moment. That smug arrogance and scruffy hair. The stupid Correlian vest over that scrappy cotton shirt. His ridiculous affection for his ship and for his friend Chewie. The way he had grown quiet whenever she could not sleep, and had drifted to the deck. There had been long nights where they had sat in silence, watching the ocean.

She had always wondered why he’d kept his mouth shut.

“Yeah. That’s right. Got some old debts I gotta pay off with this stuff,” Han said flatly. “Besides, I’m not fool enough to stick around here.”

“Han, we could use a guy like you. You’re turning your back on the world!”

“Fighting the Fire Lord ain’t my idea of courage, kid!”

“Well then, take care of yourself. That’s what you’re best at,” Luke snapped, walking away.

“Hey, Luke!” Han’s face softened. “May the Spirits be with you.”

Leia watched her twin walk away, and then it was only her and the smuggler. “Gonna give me an impassioned plea, Princess?” Han said.

Leia raised her chin to meet his eyes. “No. You made your bed and you can sleep in it. It’s not my business to decide what your path is,” she said, summoning her crisp, future leader voice. She would not think of what he looked like beneath the moonlight. She would not.

“Don’t get all mushy on me, your Highness-ness.”

“Goodbye Han,” she said.

She turned to go. In the distance, she heard –

“Goodbye, Leia.”

She liked how her name sounded on his lips. When she looked, the Falcon was already pulling away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next two chapters round up the finale of the first arc and the Siege of the Northern Water Tribe, and they're probably some of my favourite chapters - Spirit magic, character choices, hope and despair, and Jyn and Cassian finally realizing they're the same, in-universe!


	11. Book One: Hope IX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of Jyn and Windu's dialogue is lifted from the episode "The Siege of the North, Part I", and is marked with asterisks.
> 
> [Journey into the Star Cluster](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amKPH6DAnCA) from Rebels was playing obsessively when I wrote this, so you are now legally obligated to listen while you read too.

The leaders of the ships were meeting for a War Council before they began the final sail to Hoth. Bodhi had not been invited, but there were many high-ranking soldiers inside. Nobody stopped him when he tried to enter. He supposed word had spread that he was Tarkin’s pet.

Inside were the pale faces of multiple captains, commanders, and of course, Tarkin. Bodhi pressed himself against the wall and made himself as small as possible. Tarkin was speaking. “The waterbenders draw their power from the Moon. This prevents us from continuing our assault during the night. Their walls of ice are thick, and have resisted most occupation for the last twenty years. But I have found us a solution.”

Bodhi stilled.

_Anything you aren’t changing, you’re choosing, Bodhi._

“In the sack of Jedha, I discovered a secret library beneath the Holy Temple. Within it were ancient scrolls detailing many wonderous things. But what I found most pertinent was the information on the physical bodies of the Ocean and Moon spirits,” Tarkin said, a ghastly smile on his face, “I know that we are not the spiritual sort, gentlemen, but I think that it is time we ended the Water Tribe rebellion, once and for all.”

He could hear his own heartbeat.

He remembered the fall of the Holy Temple, as he, only a slip of a boy, had held his mother’s wailing body. The way the kyber had glittered in the desert sun as it rained down all around them. The red blood on the sands of the Guardians. The black tanks. The rows of faceless soldiers with fire in their hands. His mother, screaming.

And he, here, amongst the Fire Nation.

  
The black snow fell on the Northern city. The rivers feeding through the houses were turning grey. Cassian stared at the horizon and felt his chest grow impossibly tight. His breath came out in short rasps. Breathe, he told himself, breathe, damn it, you need to hold yourself together! _Go back inside! Go back inside!_ He had yelled to his sisters, but they had not wished to stay.

“The Fire Nation armada is coming,” he bit out, “Go warn the chief! We need to prepare for battle!”

The great drums were pounding as warriors ran towards the armoury. Non-combatants raced towards shelter. “I will go!” Kenobi said, “I still know something of the tactics used by the Fire Nation.”

As the old man hurried off, he and the twins sprinted towards the great outer wall. Warriors lined the top. Kanan and Hera were already there. The Chief’s face was painted. She looked fierce and powerful. Kanan’s face was hard. He watched the ships with the darkest expression Cassian had ever seen. Cassian squinted into the distance. His blood was ice. “Get down!”

The fireball smashed into the outer wall, throwing them all into the snow. More fireballs rained, obliterating anything they struck. The sky was full of red stars. Cassian bent the snow off and jumped to his feet. “We’re going to try and slow them down!” Luke said.

He and Leia leapt down from the gash in the wall. Bending a wave, they surged towards the coming ships. Cassian’s jaw was so tense he tasted blood. It felt as though the battle were never-ending. What did it matter how many fireballs he and the other waterbenders stopped? There were hundreds more that took their place.

The North was bleeding all around them.

It was dusk when the attack halted. Cassian dropped his aching arms. He could feel the moonlight coursing through his blood. The water seemed to sing beneath his feet. It warred with his physical exhaustion, trying to entice him to its siren call. It was nearly a full moon.

“Where are Luke and Leia?” Kenobi was beside him, looking a thousand years old.

A great wave crested over the wall, spilling two bedraggled figures onto the ice. “There’s too many,” Leia whispered, leaning her head against Luke’s shoulder. Her brother only made a noise of pain.

Kenobi rubbed his chin. “We need a new plan.”

  
Jyn tightened the white coat around her body. Her face still ached from the healing burns of the pirate attack. Good. The pain sharpened her focus to a razor’s edge. Avatar. Hoth. Papa. Her hands were shaking. She felt alien in her own skin. She didn’t trust herself. In the canoe was a small pack, and her tonfas. Jyn pulled her gloves over her hands.

The door creaked behind her. She whirled around. It was only Bodhi. His brown skin was ashen. In the weeks to the North, he looked like he had lost a frightening amount of weight. “About time. Come on, let’s go,” she said, bending over to make room for him.

“They’ve got a secret plan.”

She straightened. There was something else that was different about him. Warily, she said, “Yes, and what’s that got to do with us?”

“Jyn, it’s not just an invasion…they’re…they’re going to do something – we have to warn the Northern Water Tribe! We _have_ to!” Bodhi said, his voice rising.

Avatar. Hoth. Papa. Tarkin had lied. She had dreamed of the day for five years. She would hold the blade to the Avatar’s throat, and say, _give him to me_. And those horrible yellow eyes would say, yes, and she would have Papa, and Bodhi, and, and, and –

_And then what? What would happen?_

Something savage and ugly rose in her, the locked box in her snapping open. “Shut up!” she snarled, at Galen, at Lyra, at the Avatar, at the Water Tribe man, at Bodhi, “How can you say that? They are so close, Bodhi! Do you have any idea -”

“Whatever we’re not changing, we’re choosing.”

“Oh, and who told you that? Galen the Great?” Jyn sneered.

“Yes,” Bodhi said. His voice was steady. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time now… And I think I’ve finally figured it out.”

Avatar. Hoth. Papa.

“I’m going to the front lines. I’m going to sneak in, somehow, I’ll figure it out as I go. I’m choosing now, Jyn. I’m going to make it right. I _have_ to,” he was pleading with her.

“Go,” she whispered. All the fight left her. Bodhi hung his head. He would die out there. He couldn’t bend, he didn’t know to use a weapon, he was small and skinny. “Wait.”

She thrust out her tonfas. “Take these.”

“Jyn, I…”

“Bodhi.” She moved his hands so that they were grasping the polished wood. “You…you need to take care of yourself.”

He hugged her. Jyn fought back a sob. He was shaking. Pushing him away lightly, Jyn stepped into the canoe. He raised a trembling hand. She…

Avatar. Hoth. Papa. The pulleys lowered, and Bodhi disappeared from sight.

The group sat before Kanan and Hera. Kay, who had made himself scarce during the initial assault, now sat curled around Cassian. Artoo and Threepio, who had also been safely sequestered away, were present as well. Chopper’s teeth were red, and he picked at them smugly. Cassian avoided looking at the gristle. “Why did they stop their attacks?” Luke asked.

“Waterbenders are strongest under the moon,” Kanan explained, “According to legend, the Moon was the first waterbender. We learnt from watching her endless dance with the Ocean spirit.”

“I probably shouldn’t say this, but I still think it’s spiritual mumbo-jumbo,” Hera said. Her spear was black with blood.

“No, there’s something there,” Kenobi said thoughtfully, “When I was a…younger, and different man, I journeyed in the Spirit World, looking for, well, it doesn’t matter. These spirits watch over the two Water Tribes. We could invoke their guidance. The Avatar, after all, is the bridge between the Spirits and the mortal plane.”

“You’re saying we need to meditate and crossover into the Spirit World?” Luke said. He and Leia exchanged a look of doubt.

“I’m saying you can, and you must.”

“I have an idea about that,” Kanan said. “Follow me. That is, if they have permission…?”

“At this point, they can do what they like,” Hera said, getting to her feet, “I’ve already invoked full permission for them to move around the city, anyways, but it is _very_ sweet of you to ask…”

Cassian discreetly dropped his gaze at the couple’s soft smiles.

Through the grids of rivers, they came to a round wooden door set in the back of the communal stepped pyramid, that was carved into the glacier itself. Kanan unlatched it, and they stepped inside. Cassian couldn’t help gasping. There was an altar here too, but the whalebone sculptures of eels, whales, turtle seals and tiger sharks were the size of small boulders, not trinkets. Above it was three great kyber crystals. In the centre was a round pool of water. As they walked through the lush green lichen, winter poppies, and shrubs – greenery, here at the Northern tip of the world - Cassian saw there were two great cod in the pool. One was pitch black, with a white dot, the other pure white with a black dot. They circled one another. High above, the Moon shone down, yet Cassian felt warm.

“This is a Spirit Oasis,” Kanan said, “It’s been here since before the Tribe had even paddled our canoes to the end of the world.”

Cautiously, Luke and Leia sat cross-legged before the pool. He could tell immediately they were struggling. Hera left early on, Chopper trotting after, to begin plans for the second day of the Siege. Twice, Leia had to break concentration to stop Artoo from eating the fish (“Take him outside, Threepio! And bring the lizard with you!”). At around three in the morning, a messenger arrived. “Master Kenobi,” Kanan said, “The Chief wants to see us regarding the plan for the morning assault.”

“Cassian, watch over them until I get back,” Kenobi instructed.

Now it was just the three of them. Cassian could see that the twins were whispering. Then, they sat facing the pool instead of each other. They were looking at the fish, he realised. The air seemed to warm further still.

Luke and Leia’s eyes were glowing.

“Well, that’s going to be a problem.”

He turned. It was Erso.

Jyn tried not to admire the beauty of the Water Tribe city. She could only imagine what her father would say, marvelling at the way they had seamlessly integrated their traditional structures with massive walls and tributaries cut through the glacier, to protect themselves from assault. Her mother would have wondered at the way they moonlight glittered over the ice, at how the Northern lights would turn them luminous.

She crushed the thought down, and raced on. It was nearly daybreak. The Fire Nation armies would strike soon. She was running out of time.

Avatar. Hoth. Papa.

  
“Hand them over, and I won’t have to hurt you,” Erso said. A burn covered one of her cheeks, still in the process of healing. She was dripping wet, and her green eyes were sunken pools in her face. There was something savage about her now. She had come north, in the middle of an invasion, to take two full grown adults.

They circled one another. She struck, and Cassian caught the blast with a shield. Neither spoke as they duelled. They whirled and clashed, coming so close that he could hear her ragged breaths, before he pushed her away again. The hiss of fire against water were the only sounds in the night. For every punch and kick she threw he had a move to block her, for every icy prison he trapped her in she melted. He watched her lean, sinewy body bend, every strike wild and wrathful against his cool and quiet precision. A thought, strange and half-formed, arose in his mind as she twisted over his barrage of ice daggers, _my mirror_.

Behind them, the two fish endlessly orbited one another.

At last, Cassian swept two powerful waves towards her, throwing her against the glacier’s wall. He fisted his hands, freezing her in place. The moon was a siren song in Cassian’s blood, and he knew he could destroy this child of the sun.

Then something shifted.

Dawn.

Erso exhaled, and the ice around her melted. She sent a precision strike straight at him. Cassian blocked. He was thrown off his feet, and slammed into the altar.

“*You rise with the Moon,” a voice said, “I rise with the Sun*.”

His vision shuddered, and he knew no more.

  
Jyn exhaled. She felt lightheaded. For reasons she could not explain, she stepped forward and pressed her fingers to the Water Tribe man’s neck. A pulse beat steadily beneath her fingers. For a moment, she looked at him, his tired eyes, long nose, and scruffy jaw. She wondered what his name was.

Then she turned back to the Avatar, their eyes still glowing. She could only carry one. Frustrated, Jyn considered her options. She grabbed the smaller, slighter girl – Leia? No, Avatar – and heaved her onto her shoulder.

Then she disappeared into the snow.

  
Luke opened his eyes. He and Leia were sitting atop a massive brown lily pad floating on a green-brown river that spread out as far as his eyes could see. Great mangroves bloomed from the river, together with knotted trees and long vines. The air was a strange orange-brown colour, and smelt sickly sweet. Luke could feel the sun on his neck, yet the sky above was utterly foreign to him. The Spirit World. “Luke…look…”

A white bird the size of a whale flew slowly past, a great wing skimming the water. A wave the size of a house was left in its wake. Uncertain, the twins stood and waded into the water. “Listen,” Leia said, “It’s so…quiet here.”

Straining, Luke heard a faint swishing. On an altar of woven branches was an old woman, although her form was so wizened and her skin in an unnatural grey that Luke could not be certain if she were human. She sat, meditating, as three primitive swords floated around her. “Excuse me,” Luke began.

“Go away.”

“But…”

“Go. Away.”

“Listen here, you old -” Leia snapped, grabbing the front of woman’s tunic. Luke dragged her off until the woman was out of sight, yelling, “She’s just a bit tense! Sorry about that!”

Once they were far away, Luke said, “Ben always said that Spirits don’t obey the same rules that humans do. We don’t know what they’re capable of.”

Scowling, Leia followed him as he picked a random direction into the swampland. In the far distance he could see mountains. The Spirit World was infinite. They could be running around here forever, as the world burnt down. As they splashed through the swamp, the water began to ripple. Luke looked down.

A dark-skinned bald man was staring up at them. “Luke, Leia.”

“Avatar Windu!”

The water spiralled upwards, forming their past life in front of them. Up close, Luke could see that he had died perhaps in his fifties. His clothes were simple and stark, the only concession to vanity his purple cloak. Two waterskins were strapped to his back. A thin white scar was visible on the wrist of his right hand. A Water Tribe Avatar, stern and unrelenting, yet capable of empathy, Ben had said. “Why have you come here? What’s happened?” he asked sharply.

“We’re looking for the Ocean and Moon spirits,” Leia said, “The Northern Water Tribe is under attack by a massive armada.”

“So Palpatine has finally gone North… Those are ancient spirits,” Windu said thoughtfully, “*They crossed over from the Spirit World to the Mortal world very near the beginning.* I only know of one old enough to remember.”

“Who?”

“They call him the Lord of Hunger,” Windu said, his eyes hard, “He is very dangerous. I would not trust him to tell you all the truth. When you meet him, you must show no emotion, especially not fear. If you fail, he will consume your life force and leave you an empty shell.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Spirit Luke and Leia is a sneaky little reference to Darth Traya from KOTOR II. As for the Lord of Hunger, there are no prizes for guessing if you've played KOTOR II. Also, the Ocean and Moon Spirits are ladies and in love. I don't make the rules, I just look the Moon's face and think "that's a lesbian".


	12. Book One: Hope X

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines lifted from the episode "The Siege of the North, Part 2" are marked with asterisks. The confrontation at the end is inspired by Marvel Comic Darth Vader #6 (2014). In the original Legends timeline, Revan and Darth Nihilius and all those characters lived thousands of years before the OT, but I've shifted things around because I want some Revan cameos.  
> Revan is a woman in this fic because when I played KOTOR II at my cousin's house as a child because he was the only one with videogames, I always played Revan as a lady. Also, I included a mention of an Obi-Wan ship which I know is considered pretty cracky. Let me live!
> 
> I listened to the heartbreaking [Yue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrOB4yl2XKU), and [Ocean Spirit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0zb72GfjdI) from the ATLA soundtrack, when writing, as well as [Twin Moons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gscYVbaWwH0) from Rebels.

Teeth chattering, Jyn flung the unmoving body of the Avatar onto the ground of the cave. The snow had picked up outside. She had stupidly removed her gloves when breaking in, and they were now lost beneath the ice. With numb fingers, she bound the girl’s hands and feet.

It felt too personal to sit next to her. Jyn slithered over and sank down against the other wall. The Avatar was breathing, slow and steady. Her brown hair was tied in beautiful braided buns on either side of her head. Jyn rubbed her palms together, trying to form a spark. Avatar. Hoth. Papa. “There’s always something,” she whispered.

She glanced over again at the Avatar. “Hardship… I wonder if that’s something you know,” she said. She felt delirious. Distantly, she thought, I’m going to die out here. “You never had to deal with loss. You never had to raise yourself because everyone else tossed you away. You grew up a little princess in the South, didn’t you? Lucky.”

She wrapped her arms around her body, shivering uncontrollably now. “I don’t need luck. I’m better off without it. It’s got to turn, sometime, hasn’t it? One day I’ll be as lucky as you.”

The snow was growing thicker.

Cassian shot into sitting, head ringing. He looked around. Luke was still sitting in the Oasis. Erso was gone. Leia was gone. He’d lost her. _Ysabel. Juana. Leia._ All the sisters the ocean had swallowed from him. Cassian allowed himself one moment to grieve.

Then he grabbed Luke’s body and tossed it over his shoulder. A single thought burned in his mind. There was still a chance he could catch up to Erso. He would be weighed down with Luke, but he refused to let him out of his sight now.

The North Pole was shaking from the onslaught. He burst out into the sunlight to see the city overrun. Horrible black tanks and komodo rhinos had breached the walls. Cassian sprinted towards the main river. There, in the water, was a ramshackle boat.

“Andor!”

It was Solo. “Where’s the Princess?”

“Erso – the female firebender who’s been tracking us – overpowered me and took her,” Cassian said, “How did you -”

“They breached some of the smaller gates. We snuck through once we decided to come back.”

Cassian tossed Luke’s body none-too-gently into the Falcon. He had underestimated the smuggler. He didn’t know how to respond to Solo’s declaration of help, so he merely clapped a hand on Han’s shoulder. “She can’t have gotten far on foot. Let’s go.”

Solo nodded, shouting at Chewie to start the engine. They tore down the river and through the gap, Cassian waterbending the fire blasts from the perplexed enemy soldiers.

Time was against them.

  
Windu had led them to a great banyan tree, fifty feet tall. In the distance, a Spirit Wolf, tall as a mountain, moved slowly across the horizon. The landscape was a rocky crag, chillier than the swamp they had found themselves in. “I can’t go further now,” Windu said. He raised his eyes slightly. “I hope that you fare better than I did against the Fire Nation’s treachery. Only strong action will end this War.”

“Well, we are the Avatar, it’s our job,” Luke said, his face pale.

Windu looked at them for a long moment. Then he said, “I hope so. I’ve been misled by great power before.”

He faded away into the fog. The twins looked at each other.

“No emotion,” Luke reminded her. Leia nodded. She breathed the slow repetitions Obi Wan had taught them. Toss aside your fear. Toss aside your anger. Toss aside your hate.

Toss aside Obi Wan, Leia thought childishly. She reached and grabbed Luke’s hand. She could do this. They could do this. They had to.

_I was born to do this._

Together, they began to walk towards the slit in the tree. Something was lying in front of it. It was a body, twitching. Its eyes were two blank discs in the face. Empty. Luke made a choked nose, and Leia jerked back. No emotion. No emotion. They stepped through.

It was like being swallowed. The passageway was dark and cold. She could feel it slanting downwards. They descended. The air was growing colder still. She gripped Luke’s hand tighter. Something moved in the darkness. A sound like hollow bones on hollow wood.

At the end of the tunnel was a small cave. A single light, far up above, lit a small patch in the centre. The sound was getting closer.

A white mask burst out of the gloom. It had empty black holes for eyes, with two vertical blood red smears above them. “Welcome…” There was no mouth in the face. It was as though the whole realm shook with the moaning, awful sound.

Calmly, Luke and Leia bowed. “Thank you, my lord,” They said in unison.

The mask was attached to an awful black serpentine body, riddled with claw-like hands and feet. It stretched off into the gloom. “*My old friend…the Avatar…” the Lord breathed. “It’s been…a long time*.”

Unbidden, as it turned away, Leia said, “You know us?”

“*How could I forget… In another life… you, Revan, tried to slay me!” the moan rose to a scream as it whirled back towards them. “Almost six hundred years ago…*”

With perfect calm, as though she were speaking to a diplomat from the Southern Isles, Leia responded, “*I didn’t know. Why did they, or I, try to kill you?*”

A limb gestured. The light pooled on a series of drained bodies, still twitching feebly. “Love…power…redemption…an old story…”

Their faces remained perfectly still as they watched the bodies. “Behind us now… I do not hold…grudges…from a past life…”

The awful claw-like hands stroked their faces. Leia refused to flinch. “New faces…new desires…I am hungry…. Avatar…”

“We have to come to find the Ocean and the Moon spirits,” Luke said.

“Push and pull…they have danced together for all of time…”

“Please,” Leia said, “We need their help. An entire culture will be destroyed otherwise. They are our only hope.”

The Lord slithered away. “Foolish child… _you_ are their only hope…” It surged back towards them, the entire realm shaking. “*Someone is trying to kill them*!”

“Who? Tell us how we can help them,” Luke said.

“Moon and ocean…who have loved each other since time began…push and pull… they have circled each other for eternity… Balance…push and pull…life and death…good and evil…”

“The fish!” Luke and Leia cried at the same time, looking at each with utter delight.

The Lord whirled around, grasping their smooth, calm faces. “We are going now,” Luke said.

The spirit melted back into the darkness. “We’ll meet again, in another life….” It promised.

  
Cassian looked out towards the broken ice floes. A bright white light was glinting in the sky, suspended overhead. “What in the Spirit’s ass is that?”

“I think it’s their spirit trying to return, but it can’t with them separated,” Cassian said, “Head towards it!”

Han urged the Falcon through the ice floes. They cracked and crumbled as they passed. Leia was alive. If she had died in the blizzard, Luke would be dead as well, their spirit passing onto their next life. The moon was rising in the sky. Though he had not slept in more than a day, Cassian felt its power thrumming inside him.

Suddenly, Luke gasped, sitting up. His eyes were blue again. “Where’s Leia? Han, you came back!”

“Good to see you in the world of the living, kid,” Han laughed, as Luke hugged him.

Cassian was already jumping off the ship towards the pale figure grasping a struggling form. “Here for a rematch?” Erso said. Her fingertips and lips were blue.

Cassian swept aside her fire blast and sent her smashing into the ground. Erso collapsed into the snow. He jumped off the Falcon and began to cut through Leia’s bindings. “We have to go; the Spirits are in trouble!” Leia said.

“We can’t just leave her there,” Luke said, jumping off the Falcon as well, “She’ll die out here in the snow.”

“That’s the _point_ , Luke -”

“Bind her hands,” Cassian said, holding out the rope.

“Cassian, you can’t possibly agree -”

He looked at her. Chagrined, Leia hopped onto the Falcon, and then seized Han in a fierce hug. He could not justify it. Just as she had dominated his thoughts, he felt neither pity nor pragmatism explained it.

  
Bodhi raced through the ravaged city, holding Jyn’s tonfas. He could see Tarkin a way in front of him, seated leisurely on his komodo rhino. He needed to find someone, anyone, who would help him, believe him. He had removed as much as his Fire Nation insignia as he could, but he was still in red.

As he ran, Bodhi saw a firebender sparring with another firebender. Stunned, he stopped short. It was the old man who was always with the Avatar (he really needed to learn all their names properly). Gripping one of the tonfas, Bodhi jumped on his opponent and brought the weapon down hard on his head.

“Thank you – _you_!”

“Please, listen to me,” Bodhi begged, “My name is Bodhi Rook. I have information on the true plan of Admiral Tarkin! He’s here to kill the Moon Spirit! I know it sounds ridiculous, but you have to believe me!”

“If what you say is true -”

“There’s no _time_! He’s headed there right now!”

The old man stared at him, then nodded. “Follow me!”

  
The moon and sky were blood red.

Everywhere, across the Pole, waterbending began to fail.

Standing there in the Spirit Oasis, with a struggling fish in a sack, was Admiral Tarkin. In his other hand was a knife. He was ringed by multiple soldiers. Luke and Leia dropped into fighting stances, while Han held up a dagger. Cassian tried to pull the water from the pool. It barely moved. “Let it go!” Leia yelled.

The withered man laughed. In the red light, he looked gruesome. “I think not. The end of the Water Tribe is within my grasp.”

“You’ll throw the whole world out of balance if you kill it! You don’t know what you’re threatening!” Luke yelled.

“They are right, Tarkin.”

It was Kenobi. Beside him was Bodhi Rook. “My, my, the Earth Kingdom traitor,” Tarkin said, “And could it be, back from the dead… General Obi Wan Kenobi. It’s been _such_ a long time.”

“You will tear this world apart if you try it!” Kenobi was striding towards him, hands outstretched in a firebending strike. “Do not test me. Let it go, now!”

The man seemed to consider.

Then he brought the knife down in one swift stroke. “No!”

Kenobi tackled him.

The knife’s trajectory shifted. It sliced through part of the bag and the wriggling fish.

There was a horrible, choked sound. Luke and Leia screamed.

Obi Wan Kenobi fell. From his stomach protruded the knife.

High above, the Moon began to fade.

With a roar, Bodhi charged towards the Admiral, who fled into the Polar night.

  
“It’s over,” Han whispered.

“No.” Luke – or was it Leia? – spoke, in a voice that was a song of a thousand lifetimes.

They could feel the Ocean Spirit, her primordial rage and wrath. They could see a thousand faces stretch before them, Air, Water, Earth, Fire, over and over, who knew them, as well as they at last knew each other. A desert sun and icy moon, an endless sky of infinite possibilities.

_We were born to do this._

They linked hands, facing one another and stepped into the glowing white pool. The Ocean Spirit roared. Luke and Leia sank beneath in a black splash. And the Avatar rose up, in a great spirit of raging water, and it knew, at last, that this was its destiny.

“Together.”

  
Cassian didn’t know what to do. He had pulled the fish from the bag. The Moon Spirit was bleeding all over his hands. It was pale and mortal now, and it would die.

And at his feet, Obi Wan Kenobi was fading. Those strange hazel eyes were glassy, and his skin was cold.

He could smell ash. Erso had burnt her way into freedom. She looked at Cassian and Han, holding the gasping fish, the old man dying at their feet. She looked towards her friend, who had disappeared in pursuit of a madman. She too, seemed paralyzed.

“Go,” Cassian said. She looked at him. It must have been the first time they had ever truly done so. She was only a few years younger than him. She had the saddest eyes Cassian had ever seen. Louder, he said, “Go! Go after him!”

Erso nodded. She turned and ran.

“What should I do?” Cassian whispered. The old man or the Moon. The old man or the Moon. The old man or the Moon. “What do I _do_ -”

“The Moon.” Obi Wan had seized his knee. His eyes were soft, and clear. “You must heal her, Cassian Andor. You must.”

Obi Wan’s body was so still. He had hated this man. This frail, sad old man who had wished only to mend what he had broken. Firebender. “I’m sorry,” Cassian choked, “I am so sorry -”

He smiled, and Cassian knew he could not see him now. There was black blood on his tunic, on his lips and nose. He whispered, “Qui Gon… Padmé… Anakin…” A look of gentle wonder eclipsed his features, and he breathed, “ _Asajj_.”

Obi Wan Kenobi closed his eyes beneath the waning light, and knew no more pain.

Han pulled Cassian away. He was trying desperately to stem the blood flow with the sack. Cassian reached into the pool. He could feel the cool water flowing over him. His life blood. His legacy. His home. _Father. Mother. Ysabel. Juana. Leia. Luke. Han. Bodhi. Obi Wan._ Even, _Jyn_.

With all his strength, he pulled a glittering sleeve of water.

“Hold the wound closed,” Cassian said.

Han grasped the fish and did his best. Cassian could feel the ruptured arteries. He called the water forth, felt the blood flowing through the creature. He only needed to seal them shut. He was the greatest waterbending student Master Kanan had ever had. He had hands that could heal.

And the wound began to mend. The fish glowed.

It began to wriggle in their hands. Cassian placed it into the pool, and swam to join her mate.

He had done it.

  
Jyn ran through the city. The Ocean Spirit was decimating the Fire Nation Armada. The Avatar has fused with that primordial being, turning into a huge glowing creature hundreds of feet high. Somewhere, the old man and the Moon were dying. Could she have done something? _Go_ , he had said. He had known. He had understood. Always, unbidden, that thought of him. Jyn ran on.

There, on a bridge, was Bodhi Rook. Bodhi was small, but Tarkin was an old man, and rage was a powerful thing. He was savagely beating Tarkin, a look of utter hatred in his eyes. “How could you?” he cried, “How could you?”

A great claw of glowing water was rising up. It seized the duelling pair. Jyn raced forward. “Bodhi!” she yelled, “Bodhi, take my hand!’

“Jyn?” he gasped. He reached out. Jyn grabbed, and pulled. For some reason, the claw let go, and Bodhi toppled onto her.

Of Tarkin, there was no sign. He had been swallowed by the black sea.

  
Cassian watched as the Falcon pulled into the ravaged city. Han and Chewie had gone out to look for Luke and Leia, which was just as well. According to eyewitnesses, once the Moon had returned to the sky, the Ocean Spirit had disappeared, and the twins had fallen into the sea. The Fire Nation fleet had been destroyed. Any survivors would either escape, or perish.

Kay and Artoo had helped to carry Obi Wan’s body out onto the main courtyard. They placed him away from the hundreds of Water Tribe dead. As the sodden twins stepped onto the ice, they saw the body. “We should burn him,” Cassian said. It was the Fire Nation way. Whether Obi Wan would have wanted that...

It was Han who found the firewood and planks in the Falcon’s hold. Then, with one of the heavy torches, Luke lit the pyre.

“Kanan and I are going to be leaving soon, to join up with a group of rebels in the Earth Kingdom with some Water Tribe ships,” Hera said, walking over to them, her spear still drenched in blood. “Numa will be temporarily governing here in my absence.”

“But the Avatar hasn’t finished mastering waterbending?”

“Then they’ll have to get used to calling you Master Cassian,” Kanan said, winking at the twins.

As Obi Wan Kenobi at last left the mortal plane, Luke and Leia, wet-eyed and clutching each other, turned to Cassian. Wordlessly, he opened his arms. There was a fretful squawking, and then Threepio had joined them. Artoo and Kay scampered over, twining themselves around their owners. Han, with a little prodding joined in, and then they were being suffocated by fur as Chewie decided that he wanted to be part of the fun too. They were alive, and the North was alive, and perhaps they had managed it after all.

They turned and face the brilliant white face of the Moon above.

  
The raft rocked gently, pulled through the wreckage of the battle by the ocean currents. Her crew had probably perished in the attack. A distant part of her mourned them. Mostly, though, she just felt numb.

It was over now, wasn’t it? The Ocean Spirit had washed it all away.

“What are we going to do now?” Bodhi asked.

The ocean current was pulling them towards the Earth Kingdom. From there, she knew Bodhi would wish to go to Jedha.

“I’m tired,” she murmured. She lay down and closed her eyes.

Coruscant. Night.

A man, or what was left of a man, in black armour stood by a window in a plain, unfurnished house, and watched the stars. He could hear the footsteps of the bounty hunter behind him. He did not turn around.

“Tarkin’s Siege of the North failed they said,” Fett told him. “The old man that followed the Avatar was killed. There’s two of them, you know. A boy and a girl.”

He thought of island of black glass sand, a volcano exploding around them, _I loved you_.

“*Did you bring me anything of value, bounty hunter?*” the voice was low and raspy. His vocal chords had been irreparably damaged.

“Not much. Just a name.”

He waited.

“Skywalker.”

He said nothing.

“We’re done here, then.”

_Something wonderful has happened…_

The light of the stars burnt him. It would always burn him. There was a part of him that would always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire as flames chewed his flesh. His black gloved hands clenched. He could still feel his inner fire, though it was duller, weaker, than it had been when he was whole.

Behind him, the curtain ignited. Flames licked and roared through the house.

“Skywalker,” Vader said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap on the first arc! I'm fairly confident of the chapter count I've put in - the second and third arc both are 16 chapters long, with extra bonus chapters. Up next: we start the second arc as the Team ventures into the Earth Kingdom proper to search for an earthbending and airbending teacher...
> 
> Comments are really appreciated! I sometimes feel like I'm writing in the dark with this fic, especially since my old beta-reader was my ex and uhhh let's just say he's no longer in the picture to say "yes, great!" or "I don't get this". I'd love to know what people thought of the first arc, of Obi-Wan's sacrifice, of how Jyn and Cassian are already growing as people and unconsciously closer to each other!
> 
> I also have a writing tumblr [here](https://b-else-writes.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to say hi~


	13. Book Two: Empire I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of been having a rotten week lately because sometimes...sometimes you just get hit in the face by how sexist and racist SW is, how deeply rotten its fanbase can be if you dare criticize the sacred cow, if, oh my, you like those pesky lady characters... 
> 
> Anyways, new arc! We're going to see more of the Earth Kingdom than ever before.
> 
> Content warning: Krennic is a racist and patronizing POS here.

_Water. Earth. Fire. Air._

_The Four Nations once lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked._

_Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them. Nineteen years have passed, and the Avatar, twins Luke and Leia, has returned._

_It is a hopeful time for the Rebellion._

_Luke and Leia still have a lot to learn before they’re ready to save the world. But the evil Lord Vader has begun pursuit, obsessed with finding them…_

Cassian stood on the bow of the Falcon, and stretched his arms. They had hugged the Western shore of the Earth Kingdom for days now. Escorting them were two Northern Water Tribe ships, the Ghost and the Escape, captained by Kanan and Hera. The first warm, wet winds of spring were in the air. Cassian had stowed away his fur poncho in his pack, and traded his long-sleeved shirt for a simple cotton one without sleeves. Still, he kept on his blue seal-skin leather jacket, which he’d embroidered through the winter. The Earth Kingdom’s climates and landscapes stretched from deserts to frigid mountains, and their path was far from clear.

From the hold emerged Leia, who yawned behind her hand. She too, had traded in her winter wardrobe. Her braided buns had been replaced by a braided crown around her head, and, as a new deference to her role, she wore a painted green vest over her blue blouse and trousers. Following her was Luke, arms bare, more excited than ever. Even Han had smartened himself up a bit, trading his patchy vest for a deep brown seal-skin leather jacket. Only the red lines on his brown trousers, and the embroidery on his jacket, marked the country of his ancestors.

The months in the North Pole had done them all some good. His stomach lurched uncomfortably at the thought of the Siege. One element down, two seasons to go, and one companion, lost forever.

He was the oldest now, the most experienced. He had been taking care of the group long before Obi Wan’s death. The thought bit more now. Cassian frowned at the beckoning shore.

“We’re coming up on a small cove,” Hera called from the Ghost. “We’ll be leaving you here.”

“Where are you going?” Luke said.

Hera grinned, shouldering her spear. “We’re heading towards Lothal to find our old cell. I think we’ve left the kids unsupervised for too long, hmm, Kanan?”

The older waterbender laughed and dropped a kiss to his lover’s forehead. “Before we go, I have something for you all.” From a sack he pulled two vials set with bone moons. He extended them to Cassian. “These are from the pool at the Spirit Oasis. They have special healing properties, so only use them for something important. There was a lot of arguing over giving them to you, but Hera put her foot down. Seems a fitting gift for Cassian, the Moon Healer, I’d say.”

“Hey, I helped too!” Han said.

“Sure thing, Han the Moon Healing Assistant,” Hera grinned.

Cassian took the vials and pulled the twine over his head. Moon Healer. Humanity and savagery. He raised his head and nodded firmly at Kanan. He slid the vials under his shirt, where they pressed, cool and soothing, against his chest.

“For the Avatar, these scrolls to finish your training.” Kanan held out a box. “But they’re no substitute for a good teacher!”

Luke and Leia accepted, smiling at Cassian.

Han raised an eyebrow. Hera clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders to do the right thing. Good luck kiddo. And your bear.”

Their pilot rolled his eyes. Chewie gave a warble. Waving, the group peeled away from the ships. Soon, they were docking in the cove. As Han and Chewie pulled the boat up the sandy shore, Cassian spread out a detailed map.

“What now?” Luke asked. Everyone was looking at Cassian.

“You need to master airbending and earthbending, and quickly,” he said slowly. Cassian’s fingers traced the mountain ridges.

Close to the Poles, high in the mountains was Takodana, the Northern Air Nomad city. Far to the edge of the Earth Kingdom was Bespin, the Eastern city. The Western Air City of Hynestia, on the island of Kef Bir, had been sacked in the early years of the War, so close as it was to the Fire Nation. And the Southern City of Shili was back all the way near the South Pole. Across the map, too, stretched the vastness of the Earth Kingdom, so much of it still poorly plotted, where, somehow, they would need to find an Earthbending teacher.

He put the thought from his mind of what they would do about Fire. Obi Wan was gone. They had to keep moving.

“I think we should go to Jedha.”

All eyes turned to Leia. She stroked Threepio, who had begun to fuss at the city’s name. “All your information is pointing towards Jedha for news on the Death Star,” she said, “We need to know what to do about it, too.”

“Jedha is landlocked,” Cassian said, looking at Han.

He smirked. “Actually, Chewie and me have been thinking about that while you all played with magic water.”

“It’s _not_ magic -”

“Yeah, yeah, ancient art, unique to your culture, I get it. Anyways, Chewie, if you would.”

Chewie held out a scroll, which Cassian very gingerly extracted from his large, flat teeth. He trusted the strange bear, but not _that_ much. It was a detailed schematic to disassemble the Falcon so that it could be reassembled at a later date. “Han, that’s brilliant!” Leia cried.

“I have my moments.”

They set to work taking apart the ship. The majority was strapped to Kay, Artoo, and Chewie, and the rest found its way into their packs. It would be a long march to Jedha on foot.

They began to walk, eastwards, always eastwards. They were passing through thick forests, buds beginning to sprout. The tall trees cast long shadows on the ground as they clambered over roots and rocks. As they marched, they spoke of what Cassian had learnt from his messages from the rebel cells.

The Fire Lord had been in a fury over the failure at the North. They had lost many high-ranking officials in the Siege. Rumours were spreading on who would replace Tarkin. Worrying too were the rumours that Lord Vader’s Dreadnaught had been spotted on the move. Few had lived to see him, but all descriptions unsettled.

“What about that woman who was always chasing us?” Luke said.

“She probably died in the Siege,” Leia said sharply.

The world was a hungry place. Even for one as doggedly persistent as Jyn Erso. Yet Cassian shook his head. “No, I think she’s alive.”

  
Jyn lay on the woven hammock stretched in their small inn house. She swung back and forth, trailing her fingers through the air. Coyerti, a small, lush forested village on the Northern Earth Kingdom coast had been recently occupied by the Fire Nation. She supposed, distantly, that it was very beautiful. It had little use to the Fire Nation.

That was a good thing. Being useless was good. It meant that your life was your own.

_Never change, Stardust._

She wanted to put her fist through the whole beautiful town.

The door creaked, and she looked up. Bodhi had come back with a pack of food. The three weeks they had been at sea had been hard on them. Two weeks in Coyerti had returned some of the flush to their skin, the meat to their bones. “We’re pretty much set,” he said warily. He had been dancing around her lately, as though she were half-feral.

She kept dreaming of her mother’s death. Of Saw’s eyes as he had thrown her away. The Water Tribe man. “We’ll leave in the morning,” Jyn said, turning over in the hammock.

“Leaving so soon? No time for an old friend?”

Jyn sat straight up and nearly fell right out of the hammock. Bodhi took a step back, making a strangled noise. A man in a cape of pure white had stepped into the entrance of the inn house. “Oh, don’t trouble yourself on my account,” Orson Krennic said. She shuddered.

“Little…Jyn,” Krennic said. He doesn’t know my name, Jyn thought, in half-amusement. And why would he? Her only function was to stay alive so that Galen, Krennic’s ultimate obsession, could construct his darkest dreams. “Pack your things. The Fire Lord has decided that it is time for you to return. They’re letting you see your father again.”

“What?”

“You can bring _that_ too.” Krennic waved a dismissive hand at Bodhi. “I thought you wanted to see dear old Galen again? You should be happy, grateful, excited. I’ve just given you everything you’ve been asking for, for, I don’t know, thirteen years now?”

“I’m sure -”

“Don’t interrupt,” Krennic snapped at Bodhi.

“Why?” Jyn breathed, “Why did he change his mind?”

The horrible man exhaled audibly. “Well, we’ll find out together, won’t we? Compassion, all that tripe. I haven’t yet been granted an audience with him.”

A dark shadow crossed his face. There was a hungry, monstrous quality to his long face. “I know this is all so overwhelming. I’ll come to call tomorrow morning at dawn.”

He looked down at her. Something that he must have thought was affection creased his eyes. It was like watching a snake affect humanity. “Your father misses you so dearly,” Krennic said. He swept imperiously out.

Bodhi was watching her warily as he set the food on the low wooden table. “I can’t believe it,” Jyn whispered.

“Neither can I,” Bodhi said. “Don’t you think it’s all a little convenient?”

She would be going back. She would feel the soft sand beneath her feet. The warmth of the sun on the long tail of volcanic islands. The tired, gentle smile of her father. As all around them, the imperial War machine thundered on across the world. The kyber crystal necklace felt as heavy as an iron chain.

“Jyn, the Fire Lord doesn’t care about anyone. There’s got to be another reason!”

“You don’t know that!” she yelled, turning to look at him. Would they go back to the house on Lah’mu, the black volcanic sand between her toes? Would they stay in Coruscant? Would they –

_And then what? What would happen?_

  
The next morning, Jyn shouldered her pack. The walk down the mountain to the harbour was long. Below, she could see the gleaming shape of Krennic’s vessel. The ship would take her home, to Papa. She breathed in, fingering the kyber necklace.

“Jyn, wait!”

Bodhi. He was running down the steps clumsily, a pack on his back as well. “You came!” she said, a smile spreading across her lips.

“Course I came,” he said, clapping a hand onto her shoulder. Together, they made their way to the bottom of the rough stone steps. On the dock, a procession of Krennic’s black armoured guards waited. Jyn forced the bile in her throat down. Which one of you killed her, she wanted to scream, which one –

“Ah, there you are.” Krennic was waiting on the end of the dock. Jyn and Bodhi met him as he stepped forward. “Set course for Coruscant!”

“Right away, sir,” a guard said, “Secure the prisoners!”

Jyn froze. “Traitors to the Fire Nation – word got out that you attacked Tarkin over that poor little fish,” Krennic said smugly as the guards closed around them. “And that’s all the leverage I need for dear old Galen to _finally_ finish his work.”

Tarkin. Krennic. The Fire Lord. Saw. Her, father, even.

Her inner fire screamed. “Bodhi,” she said out of the side of her mouth, “Get down.”

He dropped. Jyn exhaled beneath the glorious, blazing sun. A vicious sweep of fire from her legs sent the guards into the harbour. She seized his wrist and pulled Bodhi back towards the mountain. Behind her, she heard the air crack and split.

A bolt of pure white lightning smashed into the cliff face. It shattered into a torrent of rock and dust. Jyn shielded her face. “This way!”

They ran towards the thin sandy sliver of the coastline.

On the dock, Krennic slowly lowered his still smoking fingers. “Find them!” he roared.

  
Vader sat in the Dreadnaught, contemplating. He could not travel with such a large crew. For this mission, he needed stealth. He needed speed. He had been informed of a new experimental technology, able to cover the ground quickly by land.

Now all that remained was to find where his children were.

His children. Vader clenched his fists. Sidious must know. Surely, he must have known, that Padmé had lived, at least for a time. He could not imagine a world where she would refuse to be with him.

_Anakin, you’re breaking my heart._

He stood and paced his chambers, his fingers unconsciously finding the sharp edge Padmé’s knife had found. He would kill Sidious. He would.

Vader closed his eyes beneath the helmet.

  
Once they reached a river inlet, they stopped, gasping. As she caught her breath, it sunk into her at last. They were fugitives now. The way home was closed, perhaps forever. Jyn sank down into the soft sand. Her whole body was shaking.

It was Bodhi who spoke, and his voice was steady and sure. “Jyn, Jyn we can’t stay here. We need to go. Disappear into the Earth Kingdom.”

She did not move.

“Jyn,” he said softer, “We need to get rid of anything that marks us as former Fire Nation. That marks you as Jyn Erso.”

Her armour was gone, lost beneath the ocean in the wreckage of the great armada. Her parents’ portraits, her trinkets, her mementos, everything was gone. The tonfas could belong to anybody, and the only man who knew of them had gone to a place beyond any mortal. She wore only a loose pale pink tunic and brown breeches. Bodhi had shed his trappings long ago for a deep green set, keeping only his goggles. Quiet, she wanted to say. Just let me sleep.

Then she understood.

Dream-like, she reached up and unclasped the necklace.

In her dirt-covered fingers was its thick twine and the single kyber shard, carved with a winged symbol. Soft hands had placed it around her neck. _Trust the Spirits._

The Spirits had ripped Tarkin, her crew, the armada from the world. Tarkin had made the Moon bleed, and for that they had nearly taken Bodhi.

Had the Spirits found Lyra Erso? Had they recognized the bloated, waterlogged body on Lah’mu’s black sands, as the birds had picked her eyelids?

The necklace fell from her hands. It sank into the ocean with a soft splash, and then, it too, was gone, as her mother’s body had been consumed by the sea.

For the first time in five years, Jyn Erso wept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was never mentioned in the Mandalore chapter, but it must be said...the lady Mandalorians wear practical armour and certainly none of that feminized helmet with the vague "heart shape" eye slit in this medieval-ish fantasy. I still remember how Bo-Katan's TCW 3D model always had the little sexy hip cock when she walked...
> 
> Next chapter: Han and Cassian have a heart-to-heart, a legend of two lovers is told, and Jyn's trauma congo line continues...


	14. Book Two: Empire II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've reworked this chapter a lot and am still not 100% happy with it. Some chapters just flow easily and others are just "they fight the baddies. uhh character development" and I stare at my Word Doc for a whole afternoon. 
> 
> The asterisked lines at the beginning of the legend Cassian reads come from the episode "The Tale of the Two Lovers". The asterisked lines of "the dark is generous..." and "love is more than..." are from the Revenge of the Sith novelization by Matthew Stover. 
> 
> Content warning: I don't at all want to stigmatize periods (I'm extremely pro normalize periods), but if you're squeamish, Jyn does think about her period in this chapter. What Jyn experiences in this chapter is a form of period poverty, a big and very real problem for women and girls in developing countries without access to sanitary pads/tampons/etc. There is also a single line about people being burnt alive, and Cassian describes killing a man.

It was six days of hard walking before they reached a river that curved like a delicate ribbon around a mountain range. There, they made camp next to a rocky ridge, and continued training. Cassian and Luke stripped to the waist and joined Leia in the water, dressed in her under-wrappings. On the river bank, Han spread out the map and began the cooking. Cassian had been studying the scrolls diligently whenever they stopped walking, shaping the movements and muttering the advice.

“We need to practice your octopus form,” Cassian instructed.

The twins brought their hands closer to their chests. Eight great tentacles rose from river, each twin controlling four. Bending ice blades, Cassian advanced, flinging them mercilessly. In unison, the tentacles caught and crushed the blades. Two wrapped themselves around Cassian’s ankles. He exhaled, freezing them in place.

With a hard kick, the ice shattered. Pulling, Cassian coated his arms in two long sleeves. Moving his hands, he seized control of two tentacles. Luke and Leia tightened their fists, sending a blast of icy water that froze Cassian’s arms in place.

They were talented kids. _He_ was talented. They would complete their waterbending training. “Good work,” Cassian said, as the ice melted. Then he struck once more.

By the evening, they were wet and sticky. Rolling up his trousers so that his pruned feet could dry, Cassian sat next to Han to look at the map. The twins were practicing sandbending. Under Luke’s instruction, Leia had constructed a wobbly sand tower.

“Scaling the mountain will take us days,” Cassian said, studying their position, “We could go through this pass here, into Mimban, but…”

Han’s face darkened. “Mimban’s a warfront. I’ve been there, and I’m not going back.”

“You were there, fighting?” Cassian said archly.

“What’s it to you?”

“On which side?”

Han scowled. “You never quit, do you?”

“I thought you were a just smuggler who didn’t care about the War.”

“Aright, alright,” Leia said, as soothingly as possible, joining them. “We’re not going through Mimban, so we’ll have to go around the mountain range.”

“That’ll take weeks and it’ll take us too far North…”

“Hands where I can see them!”

They jumped to their feet, sliding into defensive stances. A dark-skinned woman with dreadlocks stood on the ridge. She was pointing a longbow directly at Leia. With her dusty dark brown tunic, with orange piping, brown trousers, and yellow scarf, she was unmistakeably an Air Nomad. Her gaze slid from Leia to Han. The woman _winked_. “Oh, not _you_ …” Han said.

She smirked. “Well, that’s just rude to say to your ex-fiancée.”

Han raised his hands placatingly. “Hi, Sana. Just…what exactly is this?”

Leia was sputtering. “Who are you?” she said, pointing an accusing finger. The woman nocked the arrow meaningfully.

“Sana Starros. I’m here to turn the twins over for the Fire Nation bounty. Jabba’s spread the word you’ve been travelling with the Avatar,” she looked over at Han, “Falcon’s a pretty memorable ship.”

“Yeah, so about that, Sana -”

Cassian looked over at the river. If they kept talking, it might make her aim slow. He could kill her before the arrow found Leia’s body…. Starros leapt nimbly, placing the arrow right against Leia’s skull. Airbender. She’d moved so quickly. Why rely on weaponry, then? “Don’t try anything. I’ve already contacted the Fire Nation forces at Mimban. They’re marching right towards us now to take you into custody.”

“Sana, you can’t be serious -”

“Han, talk some sense into your _fiancée_!”

He could hear the sound of rapidly approaching feet. Then a blast of fire soared overhead, smashing into the river behind them. Thrusting his hands out, Cassian froze the burst of water. More volleys were overhead. He bent a water shield, blocking the next volley. Twisting, the ribbon of water arced beneath his arms to slice the longbow clean in half. Gasping, Starros grabbed Leia, pulling a dagger to her throat. Leia struggled beneath Starros’ shaking hands. “What are they _thinking_?”

“They’re thinking it’s easier to kill the spares than pay the bounty to an Air Nomad,” Cassian snapped, bending more waves to block the attack. “Any bright ideas, Solo?”

Starros’ panic crystallized into fury. “Those fuckers! Han, there’s an old legend about a secret passage in the mountains. We can hide there!”

Cassian could hear Leia’s teeth grinding. They threw the camp together as fast as possible. Possibilities raced through his mind. “Is this real, or a legend?”

“Well, my ex-girlfriend said,” Starros began, pocketing her knife.

“So, it’s _fake_ ,” Leia snapped. “We are not following some bounty hunter into a cave where she could murder us!”

“I think we can trust her,” Luke insisted. “I’ve got a good feeling.”

“Listen, we need to make up our mind, _now_!” Han yelled, wrangling the animals together. With a groan, Leia nodded.

They began to race towards the mountains. As they cut across a ridge, Cassian saw a full platoon of Fire Nation soldiers below. They had a tank. Further on, was the blackened earth, trenches, and screams of a warfront. Soon, they reached a great opening in the mountain. Two huge stone statues, half-bird, half-man guarded its entrance. Stone fire leapt from their open beaks. Threepio gave a terrified squawk. “When I said it was a tunnel…it’s really more of a labyrinth…”

Close by, Cassian could hear marching feet and shouting. The platoon was heading towards them. “We need to get in the cave!” Leia yelled.

“Friends of yours, Solo?” Cassian muttered. The other man ignored him. Kay was digging in his heels. “I know you think it’s a bad idea, but come on!” he gritted out, yanking on Kay’s reins. With intense irritation, the mongoose lizard walked into the darkness of the tunnel. Leia was clutching Threepio tightly.

“I know it smells funny you big fur ball! Hurry up!” Han was yelling. Only Artoo seemed relatively at ease with the cave. Not a moment too soon. The tank fired out a chain. It sank into the top of the cave mouth. There was a crash. Cassian shielded his eyes at the explosion of dust and rock. The sunlight was swallowed. Threepio began to babble, “trapped us, trapped us!”

“Someone shut the Professor up!” Han snapped in the darkness. “They brought the entrance down. We’re trapped in here.”

A torch ignited. Starros, grim-faced, held a few torches in her hands. With great difficulty, she produced a feeble breeze, and the flame blazed brighter. “Do you know your way through?” Cassian demanded.

“The legend says it was built by two lovers who didn’t want anyone to find them,” Starros said, “It says we’re supposed to trust in love, and we’ll find a way out – they built it to connect the two sides of the mountain.”

The walls seemed to press down around them. There was no choice. Each taking a torch, they continued forwards into the darkness.

  
“So, you must not be from around here.”

The woman had thick dark hair cut short, and skin as brown as Bodhi’s. She sat cross-legged, at the low table of her kitchen. They were in the village of Inusagi, in the valley of a mountain range. She had found them, delirious with thirst and hunger, on the village’s end, beneath a pink blossoming tree. It had been two weeks since they had fled Krennic, and their supplies were exhausted.

“No,” Jyn swallowed the hearty piece of lamb. “No, we’re refugees. My name is Lynna Halik, and this is my friend…”

“Uh, Bod,” Bodhi said nervously, downing the thick honeyed yak milk on the table. Jyn resisted the urge to poke him in the side.

“Yes, Bod.” Jyn did her best to smile. “We’ve come a long way, from down South.”

“My name is Maia. I was a refugee too, once,” she said, tucking into her own meal. “I fled from a Fire Nation raid… that was the last time I saw my family.”

“I haven’t seen my family in a long time either,” Jyn said. Her hands trembled slightly as she held her bowl. Bodhi stared down at his meal, lost in thought.

“The War?”

Her hand lifted, and found only air around her neck. “Yes,” Jyn whispered.

They ate the rest of the meal in silence.

Later, Bodhi had accepted Maia’s generous offer to use their spare guest room. The house was made of stone and thatch, on the grassy slopes of the mountain. Jyn followed Maia into a stone room with a wooden bucket full of rain water. They stripped down. Jyn had never felt filthier.

Untying her hair, she used the ladle to spoon the meagre water onto her body. She could feel the dirt and salt encrusted onto her skin and body hair. Scrubbing with her nails, she felt with some annoyance that she had not had any scraps of cloth during their long march. Her menstrual blood had crusted to her dark pubic and leg hair. In the Fire Nation, this was meant to be shameful, but Maia said nothing. The Water Tribe even revered women and their moon blood; their Chiefs were always women, much like the Air Nomads. Jyn would have liked to live like that. She was exhausted being manipulated by men for their dreams. Communal showering was uncommon in Coruscant, but Jyn had been in enough rebel bases to feel unaffected.

In Saw’s holdfasts, it had felt safe, and secret, a space only for women.

Here, Jyn was naked, and exposed. Her intricate defences had been washed away by the great Ocean.

She looked up to see Maia watching her. “You were burned, a while ago,” the woman said, reaching out towards Jyn’s shoulder. The spidery web of pale scars from the lightning was visible only under deep scrutiny. _Silence, girl!_ The Fire Lord had roared. Jyn jerked away. She did not think anyone had ever touched her with some tenderness in many years. The hug with Bodhi at the North Pole had already shaken her.

Belatedly, she saw the red burn marks littering Maia’s body. “What happened?” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“The Fire Nation burnt down my village,” Maia said, running her fingers through her shorn hair. “Many people were burnt alive.”

The taste of bile, when she had tried to force the crew to sail through the storm, was bitter on Jyn’s lips. She thought she knew what it might be.

In Maia’s simple bedroom, she laid out a dark green, almost black blouse, threaded with beautiful small blossoms. “It’s one that I managed to save,” she said softly, extending it towards Jyn.

It was the prettiest thing Jyn had ever held. She felt like she was going to be sick. She shrugged it on, as well as the loose cotton trousers, and the brown painted leather vest. Maia offered her a skirt, but she declined. She felt fraudulent in the culture of a people her homeland had tried to wipe out.

She lay down on the woven straw mat, and watched Maia sleep, twitching every hour at nightmares.

  
Hours passed. The tunnel was tall and wide as the Tribe’s meeting house, and the walls were strangely smooth. They encountered endless dead ends and switchbacks. Exhausted, the group paused to eat some of the seal jerky and nuts in their packs. Leia by now had grown tired of being sour at Starros, and offered her some nuts. The other woman shook her head. She was staring fixedly at the cave walls. “It’s not cave-ins,” she said, “The tunnels are changing, like there’s…”

“Something alive,” Cassian finished.”

The tunnel began to shake. Great stones fell from the ceiling. He looked up –Cassian felt something impact his midsection. He was thrown as a mountain of boulders crashed down. His back hit the stone floor.

When he could breathe again, Cassian sat up and looked around. Han was with him. A huge wall of rubble separated them from the rest of the group. Han had saved his life.

Getting to his feet, Cassian joined Han, who was digging through the rubble. “There’s too much,” Han said, sitting back on his heels. “Unless those two learn earthbending without bringing the whole mountain down on us, that way’s out.”

“Waterbending won’t help,” Cassian said tightly. He scanned their surroundings. A new passageway was to their right. They had a single burning torch, which meant they had less than hour of light.

“Yeah, and unless we’ve got blood like Avatar T’ra Saa, we’re good as dead,” Han said, referencing the Avatar before Avatar Windu. The Air Nomad had lived nearly three hundred years. Cassian didn’t think Han and he were going to be that lucky. Cassian already had a few grey hairs from stress.

He sat down and considered his options. Luke and Leia were trapped with Starros. They both had water skins if she tried anything. Starros was an airbender, but weak or a novice. Han, well, Han was better than nothing. There was something out there that was alive. “We go through the new passageway,” he said at last, voice very calm, “We find help. We get the others out. They have enough food and water to last three days.”

The other man nodded. With Han holding the torch, they set off through the passageway. Something about the air in here felt different. Older.

“So,” Han said conversationally. Cassian grunted. “Look. Besides the obvious, what did the Fire Nation do to you personally?”

“They killed my family,” Cassian said shortly.

The torchlight flickered over the smooth stone walls. Then Han said, to his surprise, “Okay, that was really stupid of me to say.”

“Why did you serve in the Fire Nation army?”

Han was quiet. “Dad was Fire Nation. Came to Corellia a few years before the War began. Always wanted to travel. Met a pretty Earth Kingdom girl. My dad abandoned me a year after the War began.”

The passageway began to curve, and they followed. They were going deeper into the mountain than ever before, Cassian realised. Han continued to talk. “I became a scum rat for the White Worms – Corellian crime syndicate. There was…a girl.”

“You went to War over a girl?” Cassian didn’t stop the disgust in his voice.

Han was silent. Then, “I’m starting to realize...just like with Leia and Sabine, you grow up a man, you grow up Fire Nation… you believe you’re the only one who’s people. And everyone else is for the taking.” He made a sound like he knew he wasn’t explaining himself well. “So, I was fifteen and thought, I lost the girl to the gangs. I’ll come back as an officer, and I’ve got power then, to free her. Never mind everyone else.”

Cassian thought of his own entrance into the Rebellion at six years old. He thought of the first man he’d killed, the ice dagger clumsy. He hadn’t struck the artery correctly, and been forced to hack at the man’s throat, as he coughed and bled and finally died. Life in the poles was harsh; the Tribe valued survival, by any means. _I have to keep moving too._ Instead, Cassian said, “Then what happened?”

Han nodded. He switched the torch between his hands. “That’s where I found Chewie. He was animal labour. I freed him…and the war prisoners too, so… I kinda had to go on the run.”

The sliver of respect that had grown in Cassian since the Siege of the North blossomed into a flame. Despite himself, he asked, “And the girl?”

Han exhaled. “She left me. She wanted something and I convinced myself I knew what it was. Became a smuggler after that. Ran some jobs with Sana…”

“Why did you come back?”

He had wondered for weeks now, but tempered it down.

The man looked at him, incredulous. “Because it’s not just me that’s out here, isn’t it? Hera, Kanan, everyone there… you’re _people_. You deserve to be free.”

Cassian was speechless. He had considered numerous selfish explanations. He looked at this tall Fire Nation man and felt the respect grow. Any words he could think of were silenced as they came to a great round doorway in the stone. It was carved with geometric, interlocking shapes.

They stepped through. The torchlight fell upon two giant stone sarcophagi in the shape of a man and a woman, wearing ancient robes. Alcoves were carved into the walls containing dusty stone jars.

“It’s a tomb.”

  
“Chewie, stop pawing at the walls!”

“We need to think,” Leia said, massaging her forehead, “And _you’d_ better not try anything.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Sana said, folding her arms. "You're being awfully nasty to someone who's decided _not_ to turn you in."

Leia blinked, then looked at her sideways. “Oh. Uh, great. I don’t suppose you can airbend us out of here....?”

Sana scowled immediately. “No. I can’t. My airbending…”

“It’s very weak,” Luke said.

“I’m out of balance,” Sana snapped, “Materiality and being free as air don’t go hand in hand… Bending’s more than fancy movements, turns out.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. But, what do we do now?”

They looked at each other. In the darkness was the sound of an animal breathing, low and enormous.

  
Cassian and Han slowly walked down the stone steps until they were level with the sarcophagi. They were as tall as Cassian’s head. “I think it’s the two lovers from the legends,” Cassian said, “Or at least, whoever inspired them.”

“What’s all that writing say?”

For a second, Cassian was thrown. “You can’t read?”

“Just Basic and Corellian, whatever to get by. I don't know what _that_ 's written in.”

“I’m sorry,” Cassian said, and found he meant it. There were illustrations to accompany the particular Earth Kingdom script. It was old, but Cassian had learnt enough to decipher some. Though some saw the Water Tribe living as poor and pathetic, Cassian knew the truth. Community was strong, and everyone had a role, to feed, to care, to teach, to weave. He remembered learning letters from the aunties and uncles, as they told their stories in the long winter nights. And the stories… Cassian had always liked the stories.

“*The two lovers met on the mountain that divided their villages. The villages were enemies, so they could not be together*.”

The paint was fading on the carvings. How old were they? The man wore a red robe, he realized, as he traced his fingers over the carving. And the woman wore blue. Red and blue. His fingers lingered on the carving, unbidden.

“*But their love was strong. Together, they found a way. The two lovers learnt earthbending from the badger moles.* They watched the great beasts hear the song and memory that sits in every stone, the stories of the old lakebeds and mountain ridges lost to time. They felt these and followed how they made the great earth tremble. They became the first earthbenders.”

Cassian stepped back. “This tomb must be over 10,000 years old,” he whispered, “if the legend is true.”

The unspeakable age of the tale they were reading was electrifying. It was the same thing he had felt in the Spirit Oasis, grand unknowable. Two lovers, in red and blue, kissed tenderly in the next carving. “They built elaborate tunnels for them to meet in secret. Any who followed would be lost within the labyrinth forever.

“*But one day the man did not come. He had perished in the war between their two villages. The woman wept, and her grief was terrible to behold. She unleashed a devasting show of her earthbending power*.”

The carving was barely human, the scratch of twisted shape in a blood red sky. “*For a moment, it seemed that she might destroy them all. But instead, she declared the war over*.

“’Why?’ the people asked. ‘We have slain the man you love and robbed you of your future.’

“’Yes,’ the woman said. ‘*The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it is kind*. I would hate you, for your quarrels and indifference and hatred of those unlike you.

“’*But in the heart of its great strength lies its weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back.’

“’Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars*.’

“’But the man is gone,’ they cried, ‘He is dead and his love has perished with him.’

“And so, the woman reached into her chest and plucked from it her heart.”

They were nearly to the end of the carvings. “’Do not despair. Love does not depend on space and time,’ the woman said. ‘I will give you something more powerful than death or duty, stronger than rage and passion. I give you the key to hold the darkness back.’

“And she threw out her hands, and the pieces of her heart were scattered to the four winds, to the depths of the deep earth, to the great brightness of the sky, to the edges of the polar seas. ‘I will give you hope,’ she said.”

Inlaid in the stone was a single crystal. “Kyber,” Cassian whispered, “The legend is about the creation of kyber.”

As though moved by some invisible entity, they turned. Two great stone sculptures of a man and a woman, in simple, ancient robes were kissing. The paint had long since faded, but Cassian was certain that they, too, were red and blue. Above was carved, “Love is brightest in the dark.”

  
“Well, since the legend says to trust in love…” Luke said, “I don’t know, we should tell a love story? Maybe one of us has a _secret romance_ going on?”

Leia glared at her twin. “Well, fine, I’ll tell you.”

“You two are the Avatar?” Sana muttered, quickly stifling her smile.

Luke grinned expectantly. Leia clasped her hands together dramatically. “So, I…had a crush on Cassian when I was six. He was _such_ a cool thirteen-year-old…”

“Oh, very funny -”

The wall of the tunnel exploded. A huge, brown fuzzy animal raised its paws, bending the rocks with its power. Badgermole. “Somehow I don’t think he’s buying that either,” Luke squeaked.

  
“I have…a crazy idea,” Cassian said.

Han looked at the sculptures. He looked at the carvings. He looked at the torch, which was almost at its end. “Buddy, I am not kissing _you_.”

“That’s not what I was suggesting,” Cassian said, folding his arms, “But I think…what if we talked. That is the whole point of the legend.”

Han looked down at the torch once more. Then he said, “Fine. I was wrong and shitty and bigoted. And I’m trying to do better.”

Gritting his teeth, “I will never forgive the men and the military who killed my family and destroyed my home.”

He thought of the empathy he had felt for Erso. “But you…are not responsible for what happened there.

“You’re…you’re my friend.”

Han exhaled. “And I’m sorry about being a self-serving piece of banthashit that thought you had a massive stick up your ass for wanting to protect your people. You…you’re alright.”

The torch was almost at its end. “Okay, now what?” Han said.

With the greatest reluctance, Cassian opened his arms. Han swore. Dropping the torch to the ground, the two men, very, very awkwardly embraced.

With a hiss, the light went out. They were plunged into total darkness.

Green. Red. Blue. Purple. Yellow.

A thousand kyber crystals, embedded into the ceiling of the tomb, were glittering in every colour imaginable. And they led towards another passageway, deep in the darkness. “That’s how they did it,” Cassian breathed. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. “They extinguished their torches and followed the crystals.”

“And our way out!” Han yelled, pulling away. “We’re never telling anyone about this.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cassian said, already setting off through the tunnel. He began to run.

Ten thousand years ago, a man in red and a woman in blue had run beneath the glittering crystals to find one another.

He emerged into blinding, brilliant sunlight.

As well as two massive badger moles, atop which were Luke, Leia, and Sana. The twins slid down and threw themselves at Cassian and Han. “We found giant furry earthbenders who were moving the tunnels and Leia sang a love song and they helped us out!” Luke said. “And…maybe a future master airbender?”

“Nah, kid,” Sana said, pulling her scarf up around her hair. “You need to find a real master. Someone…new.” She gave a two fingered salute at Han, and surprisingly, Leia. “Watch out for yourself, kid. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“So, how did you two get out?”

Cassian and Han eyed each other. “Luck,” they said together.

  
It was early morning when Jyn slithered out and into Bodhi’s room. He awoke with a start, as she thrust out the packs of food Maia had made for them during dinner. The sun was already beginning to rise. The days were growing longer as the equinox approached. Outside, an ostrich horse was tethered to the house. Cautiously, Jyn slipped the rope off, and wound it around the creature’s neck, making a rein. Deftly, she pulled herself up. Bodhi was watching her, aghast.

“Well?” Jyn said. She would not think. She would not. The clothes felt as though they would burn her pale flesh, until she was charred bone.

Bowing his head, he took her hand and climbed up behind her.

The ostrich horse rode southeast.

From the house, Maia watched. She closed the door with a soft, defeated click.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love writing Luke and Leia as "Leia has brain cells but the second Luke is around she gets hit with the Skywalker clown genes". 
> 
> Sana Starros is from the new Marvel Star Wars comics (I've only really skimmed them because they didn't really catch my interest). Maia is from the book Rebel Rising (I think she dies in it, I also didn't finish it, don't shoot me!). The Avatar is said to have lived a thousand lifetimes, which is why there's the line that earthbending is over 10,000 years old (I like the idea that when the Avatar came about is just kind of mysterious and nobody knows why it happened - not everything needs an explanation!). 
> 
> Next chapter: the group enter a mysterious swamp, visions are had, and Jyn and Bodhi finally confront each other.


	15. Book Two: Empire III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Asterisked sentences come from the ATLA episode "The Swamp". 
> 
> I have aged down Kes and Shara here because IF (big, massive if) I were ever to write the Sequel Trilogy (or the Prequel Trilogy), ages would line up. Like the Water Tribes, the Yavin people are Meso-American, with some North African influence due to their proximity to Tatooine (which was deliberately Middle-Eastern-coded by George Lucas)/other desert areas. I'm definitely messing with how the geography of our world is exhibited in this world.

Leia’s head was swimming. They had left the labyrinth three days ago to march East once more. She had a strange urge to shift course. She looked down at her feet. They seemed to belong to someone else. “Why are we going South?” she asked.

The stupor that had fallen over them seemed to lift. Rubbing his eyes, Cassian produced the map. Han looked over. Their new camaraderie was bizarre to Leia, but she wasn’t about to complain. There was something that warmed her belly at seeing the scruffy smuggler friendly with her oldest friend that she did not want to reflect on. “There’s the Yavin Swamp. Some smugglers use the delta for hideouts, and I’m not eager to say hi.”

“I don’t know,” Luke said, his eyes distant. “I feel like we should go there…”

“I feel it too,” Leia said, “But I don’t know if we should trust any Spirit magic.”

She could still remember the awesome power of the Ocean Spirit. When she and Luke had activated the Avatar State, when _you_ and _me_ had become _I_. The unearthly rage as the Avatar had destroyed the armada. Perhaps, at winter’s start, she would have been afraid to know what she was capable of. Now, at winter’s end, Leia knew she would need to do it again. She had to. 

Artoo began to bark furiously. The group looked back. A massive tornado was heading towards them. It was upon them before they could run. Leia screamed as the wind caught her. She was thrown miles into the air, spinning. For a second, she blacked out. Her body smashed into warm, dark water. Leia choked and sputtered, clawing her way to the surface.

There were three more splashes. As Leia winced, she saw that her friends had also been deposited into the swamp. Huge trees blocked most of the light, their large gnarled roots drinking in the saltwater. Thick marsh reeds and willows clustered around them as well. The cacophony of bird song was louder than anything Leia had ever heard. Bright eyed frogs watched from beneath thick leaves, calling out. Rat-herons and otter-ibises fluttered past. She stood. The salt water was high as her knees, and she could see frightened fish swirling around them. It was more animal life in one tiny sliver than a thousand feet of the Pole.

The air was hot and sticky. Leia stripped off her blue blouse decorated with water tribe beading her father had sewn. She was left in her cloth under-wrappings and the painted Earth Kingdom vest. Mud squelched under her boots. The boys had already stripped down as well.

Their pets were all gone.

Luke, who was the strongest of them, began to climb up one of the trees. “There’s just swamp for miles. And the tornado is gone!” he called down.

Han squinted upwards. “Sun’s in that direction,” he said, “That means East is that way. I say we go there.”

“What about Artoo and the others?” Luke cried, as he scrambled down.

“We have to trust they’ll track us,” Cassian said, “We could be lost in here for weeks if we try to search for them.”

Luke frowned. Pulling out a kitchen knife, Han began to cut a swath through the swamp. As they followed, Leia began to feel a tingle across her skin, an invisible hand. Almost in unison, she and Luke said, “Han, I think you should stop that!”

“It’s just a swamp. What’s gonna happen?”

“It feels alive,” Luke said warningly. “And the Spirits don’t like us harming their places for no reason.”

“Yeah last I checked, plants and animals are alive, kid.”

Unconvinced, Leia kept a watchful eye on their surroundings as they trudged. Twice, the water rippled threateningly, but it was only a sea cow passing through. In the shadows, she thought she saw greenish-grey swamp wolves. The swamp was growing darker. Something screamed.

It was a fat, white bird. It watched the group with black beady eyes. “We should make camp,” Cassian said uneasily. Leia’s stomach turned as they began to cut branches to make a fire.

Yet, she began to feel sleepy as they chewed on their rations. None of them was willing to attempt cooked food. The fog was rolling in. The temperature was dropping. The air tasted like the spirit magic of the North Pole. Bright and magnetic. _Sleep, child_. Leia’s eyelids drooped. The group slumped against one another.

Slowly, as they slept, ropy vines wove themselves around their ankles. There was no time to scream. They were each dragged off into the darkness.

  
_“Where do you think you’re going, you overweight ball of fur?”_ Threepio said as he fluttered after Artoo. _“We’re doomed. We’re going to be eaten.”_

 _“There’s a 98% chance that the top predators around here are smaller than us,”_ Kay responded, baring his teeth at a frog that came too close.

Chewie warbled.

_“Don’t you dare turn back Chewbacca, you’ve got to protect me from these two maniacs!”_

A teenage girl with tan skin shouldered a bow and arrow and stared at the quartet of animals howling, twittering, and barking at one another. “Hey, Kes…” Shara said, “I think we found dinner.”

Cassian sliced through the vines with his bending and took off. When he reached a clearing, he slowed. Nothing pursued. Whatever Spirit protected this swamp, it seemed to have given up on him. He kept the water flowing through his fingers as he walked, eyes scanning the peripheries. Daylight was approaching. A cat-caiman slept in the shade, which he carefully avoided.

There was someone standing in the clearing. Cautiously, Cassian approached. Long dark hair, the embroidered blue dresses, threaded with stone beads and furs. “Mamá,” he breathed. His mind felt foggy.

Cassian began to run. There was Ysabel, and Juana next to her. “Mamá!” he yelled. His hand grazed her shoulder.

It was a dead tree trunk, tall as a man. Cassian jerked back. Lying in the water was Obi Wan, bleeding black blood into the water. Jyn Erso and Bodhi drowned next to him. Obi Wan’s eyes opened. “You let me die,” Obi Wan said.

They sank into the swamp and were gone. Cassian bent over and dry-heaved.

  
Han sliced through the reeds and vines, cursing. Whatever had pulled him away had disappeared. It was probably biding its time. The others had better have been smart and continued East. Cassian was probably clever enough to do that, but he didn’t know if Luke or Leia knew how to navigate. Han swore. He needed to find her, never mind that she was from a hunting, sailing culture.

She could take care of herself. He’d seen her turn into a giant glowing creature and obliterate an armada. But he just – Alright, that was _enough_ self-examination.

A woman was standing in a patch of sunlight.

Raising his cooking knife, Han approached. Dark hair pinned up. The long blood red cape. “Qi’ra,” he said.

“You drove me away!” Qi’ra snarled, her cape gliding over the water and leaving no trail. “Couldn’t you have just let me disappear?”

She surged towards him, vanishing into a tangle of reeds.

  
Leia clambered onto a thick tree root. She could see the sun through a gap in the trees. Her only hope right now was to get to the meeting spot. A fat salamander lolled on a tree stump as she dropped down. It gave her a rude look at her splash. East. She began to trudge through the swamp in that direction.

A woman was floating in the water ahead of her. Bending an ice dagger, Leia waded towards her. She gasped. Padmé floated in the murky swamp water, in the blue ribbonned dress they had placed in her. Other bodies floated up – her aunts, brown skin covered in black burns. Leia choked.

Padmé opened her eyes. “You are his child, too,” she whispered. Fire poured from her lips, her throat, her eyes. Leia ducked at the immolation. For a split second, she thought she saw a bright blue eye in Padmé’s burnt face.

Then the vision was gone.

Leia ran. She smashed into a person, real, human and solid, and gasped. “Luke?”

  
Luke pushed through the reeds. He could feel the swamp breathing around him. Something had summoned them here. To kill them or to trap them, Luke didn’t know. He wasn’t going to wait around to find out.

He heard something moving. “Hello?” Luke said cautiously, bending an orb of water.

It was the burnt bodies of his aunt and uncle. Aunt Beru’s head turned. “Oh, Luke,” she said, “Why didn’t you come back sooner?”

“Why didn’t you say you were sorry?” Uncle Owen croaked.

Luke reached forward.

Something hard and solid slammed into his side, sending them both into the water. It was Leia, wild-eyed. “Did you see -” Luke turned his head. They were gone.

“I saw Mother,” Leia said, pulling him to his feet. “She was…”

“I saw my Aunt and Uncle.” Leia’s face crumpled, and she rested a hand on his shoulder. “Oh, _Luke_ …”

“Luke…Leia….”

“Ben?”

The light thickened. It pooled in front of them, rising up into the shape of a man. Ben shimmered, his outline blue and fuzzy. There was something different here. Despite the glow, Ben felt more real than Luke’s vision. He gave a gentle smile. The weariness he had carried in life was softer now. “Go to Dagobah,” he said, “There you will find Yoda, an old Sage who instructed me in the mysteries of the Spirits…”

“Ben!”

He was gone. Luke angrily wiped the tears that threatened to spill from his eyes. He had not been there to watch Ben die. Luke would not pretend he knew Ben’s past, but he could understand the sacrifice he had made. He wished he had been at the man’s side, as the only one left in the world who had cared for him. Not fifty feet in the sky, filled with primordial power.

 _Dagobah_.

“Come on,” Leia said, “We need to find the others. And look at that map to figure out where Dagobah is.”

He knew she understood. Luke managed a small smile at his twin. They made to walk through the swamp. A great gust of wind threw them back.

A figure was standing on the rock a few feet in front of them. They wore a heavy pale helmet with six long spikes, a thin slit cut for the eyes. Over a brown shirt, and trousers was an orange tunic decorated with geometric patterns. Weathered orange armour was strapped to their wrists, as well as their calves. Their deep orange cape fluttered in a non-existent breeze.

The figure threw a wooden staff into the air. They leapt and caught the glider, swooping over the twins’ heads. An airbender.

“We have to go after her!” Luke yelled, bending a great wave to surf after.

“Her?” Leia cried, skating after him. “How can you even tell?”

Luke could not answer. Some deep part of him, ancient, older than even the oldest sages, meditating under waterfalls to find enlightenment, knew this girl. They had met before. He was sure of it.

The girl flew beautifully. Despite the weight of her armour, she twisted, straight as an arrow, through thin gaps of the trees. She dropped down from the glider to slide across thick tree branches, and jumped, catching her glider once more. It was as though she were the wind itself and Luke could only chase, trapped on Earth, weighed down by his element.

He was so close. Luke leapt forward –

And crashed right into Han and Cassian.

“Did you see that girl?”

“Brunette girl?” Han said, at the same time Cassian said, “Dark haired Water Tribe woman and girls?”

“You two had visions too? I told you the Swamp was alive!”

“Listen kid, there is absolutely nothing mystical -”

A giant monster made of green vines burst from the river.

  
_“What do the hairless ones say, C3PO?”_ Kay said, warily watching the carved wooden canoes.

“ _They are speaking in a most unusual dialect of Southern Water Tribe… They are saying – that they’re going to eat us!”_

Artoo bolted with a high-pitched whine, followed closely by the other three.

“There is definitely something up with those animals,” Kes said thoughtfully.

Shara, sitting at the front of the hunting party, yelled, “After them!”

The monster’s vines shot forward, seizing Han in their grip. Luke and Leia bent, slicing off its arm. Han dropped into the water with a yell. The monster spun, smashing the twins aside with its free hand. It grabbed Han once more and took off through the swamp.

As Luke sat up, he saw a massive wave crash through the swamp. Cassian surfed on top. Sweeping his hands overhead, he pierced clean through the creature’s shoulder with one perfect strike. The monster staggered. As Cassian moved towards it, still crouched in a waterbending stance, vines grew to cover the hole. Dodging the strikes, Cassian bent a huge wave. It pushed the monster backwards, hitting a fallen tree. Luke gasped.

Cassian had _parted the swamp_ , exposing the muddy ground below. “Remember when he couldn’t even make a waterwhip?” Luke said, helping Leia to her feet. They winced as the monster shot a wave of vines out from its belly, throwing Cassian in front of him. The monster placed Han against its chest, its vines sealing them together. “Keep its arms busy!” Cassian said, spitting out swamp water.

They complied. Luke saw Cassian run up the tree roots until he was level with the monster’s chest. Exhaling, Cassian froze the area around Han. Bending a torrent of water behind him, he used it to rocket himself forward. The ice shattered as Han and Cassian were sent forward, landing in a heap. Cassian shoved Han off quickly. Wind-milling his arms, he bent huge water discs.

As the vines were sliced apart under Cassian’s brutal assault, Luke saw it. “There’s someone inside! She’s bending the vines somehow!”

Whirling, Cassian sliced the monster’s head clean off. Vines erupted out from the creature’s base, seizing him. Roaring, Luke and Leia sliced apart the remaining vines. Out-numbered and beaten, the woman raised her hands cautiously.

“Now, why did you lure us here to kill us? Are you hunting the Avatar too?” Luke demanded.

The middle-aged woman was tall with brown skin. Intricate diamond tattoos decorated her chin. She wore a long brown dress that hung from chin to ankle, decorated with woven reed textiles. The skirts were split to the hip, where she wore loose trousers beneath. A woven reed veil covered her head, from which skin, bone, and feathers were wound. “Avatar? No, I did not bring you here. Nor do I want to kill you,” she said in very formal Basic. “Please, come with me.”

With strong, rigid movements, she moved a great net of vines down. Then Cassian, switching to a language Luke didn’t know said politely, “ _Estás controlando el agua en las vidas_.”

The woman responded, in different accent, “ _Si. Somos familiares, el sur y la ciénaga._ ”

Warily, the group stepped onto the net. With stranger waterbending - Luke guessed this what Cassian had realized - she began to lift them into the great boughs of the tree. They were in the centre of the Yavin Swamp, atop a great mangrove tree.

“My name is Luminara Unduli,” she said, walking easily to sit atop a thick branch. “I believed you were Fire Nation troops here to damage the Swamp. I attacked you, and for that I apologize.”

Cassian looked like he had swallowed a lemon. “I didn’t know people lived here,” Han said very hastily.

Her eyes twinkled. “Do you think you are the only ones to search its mysteries, smuggler? Please, sit.”

Reluctantly, the group sat. “This is a sacred place. I heard the great Spirit of this tree, Mother Mangrove, calling to me many years ago, to reach enlightenment. She has called to you as well. The swamp is one great organism, just like the world. I see now why it called me to return here after the Separatist Wars’ end. There was…great loss. Friends, family…a young girl I should have raised better.”

There was a strange energy around the tree. The brush of a hand, and a smile made of roots and vines, reeds and flowers. Luminara smiled sadly. “It was guiding me, and all others touched by the mistakes of this War, to see what I could not. Listen.

“*You can hear every living thing breathing together. You can feel every living thing growing.* The swamp reflects ourselves – its cruelty, its ego, its love and generosity. *We all have the same roots, and we are all branches of the same tree.* We are part of this world, even if some people believe that the path to righteousness lies on relinquishing it.”

“But what about our visions?”

“*In the swamp we see visions of people we lost, people we loved, those who seem lost to us. But the swamp tells us they are not. We are still connected to them, however painful their separation. Time is an illusion, and so is death*,” Luminara said. She turned to him and smiled softly. “I miss Master Kenobi dearly as well.”

“You knew him?” Luke said.

“In another life,” Luminara said, “I think he would be quite surprised to find me here. I was different then. Then, I might have said, there is no death, there is only the Spirits. But now I would say, grief is no evil, and to remember and love is part of this balance.”

Luke was thinking over the girl he had seen. “Then…what Leia and I saw… it’s someone we will meet! It’s our airbending master!”

Luke hurriedly described the girl to Cassian and Han. An odd look crossed Han’s face. Luminara thought for a moment, and then said, “Head to Savareen. There have been rumours of a band of rebel airbenders there that match your story. I have no doubt this girl is one of them.”

“What about the animals?” Luke said.

Luminara raised her eyebrows. “Are you not the Avatar?”

_We are all branches of the same tree._

The twins looked at each other. Then, intertwining their fingers, they flattened their palms onto the tree. Something electric coursed through them. It was the sound of a hundred thousand bright breathing things, yearning for the sun. And there, in the thicket of intertwined lives, were four creatures.

The Yavin Water Tribe village was several communal homes made of interwoven thatch and reeds. Leia marvelled at how different they were, yet similarities lingered. Their skin ranged from fair to deep brown, often covered in tattoos, and some even had deep blue eyes. They wore simple clothes of hide and woven reeds, dresses, skirts, loincloths, and every woman wore loose trousers for the swampy environment. But the decorations were familiar: bone beading, feathers, and furs. Familiar also was the women-centered culture and female leader, a teenage girl named Shara Bey with tan skin and curly dark hair. Unlike her mother’s furs, Shara wore great beaded necklaces, and carried a carven bow on her back. Several tattoos spiralled down her arms.

Luke and Han were speaking to her solemn-faced love Kes Dameron, who had soon grown excited hearing their stories of rebels they’d met. “We must have separated from the South hundreds of years ago,” Shara said, “We’ve always kept within the Swamp, only going to some of the villages nearby. Only a few of us have ever gone out beyond, like Luminara, her old apprentice, well you don’t know them.”

“It must have been during the years of Tribal war, before we become one Tribe,” Leia said. “Isolation…has always been the Water Tribe way, to survive.”

The young girl’s eyes shone in the dark, and Leia felt a sudden shame. The rage she had locked up against her parents flamed, brighter than a falling star. In a whisper, the ice blue eye said, _you are his child, too_. On Cassian’s lean, hungry face shone with something he had carried since they had glimpsed the shining, pristine North.

Why did you never come for us?

Why did you never let me leave?

“I’m tired of it,” Shara said, “We’ve been helping escaped slaves from the Fire Nation prison camps since the War began. But there are always so many more. The Tribe survives, but so what? One day they’ll burn our swamp down too, just like your South and North.”

Leia straightened. Her parents had taught her some things. “How would you like to do more?” she said, glancing over at Cassian, who was tearing into the roasted fish, and fruits called koyo berries.

“Yes… Sometimes it feels like this War will never end.”

“Do you really think that?”

“No,” Shara said, and her voice was hard, and Leia wished for some of that mesmerizing spirit too, “And even if I did, I’m going to keep going. Even if the Avatar never returned. But I’m glad you did.”

The clawing fear, the wrathful anger and impatience, the irritation seemed to melt in the face of Shara’s conviction. Hope. Was that not what that loathsome Spirit had called them? “We’re going to end the War. Before summer’s end.”

Shara’s dark eyes flashed. “Then Princess, I’m all ears on what all these rebels have been brewing.”

“You’re a rebel now too,” Leia said. Shara grinned at her. “I guess I am, aren’t I?”

“What I still can’t figure is how you made that tornado,” Han said as they ate and talked. Luminara, who was eating something that looked very suspiciously like a bug, said, “Oh, I am just a waterbender. I can’t make tornados.”

“No accounting for weather then.”

Leia rolled her eyes.

Far away, a bird screamed. A branch flexed and knocked it away, before settling back, smooth and unmoving.

They had continued their journey through the mountains and valleys of the Northern Earth Kingdom. Raada, Chasmeene, it all blended together. Burnt fields and failing crops. More and more people looked like Bodhi here. The people she was about to rob looked like him. She adjusted the blue mask. In the window, the woman’s face was thin and gaunt. She ate only a small handful of rice and lentils, spooning the rest to her children’s plates.

This town was as dusty and barren and starving as all the others they had passed through. The Fire Nation was rationing out food to keep feeding its war machine.

The ribs of the little girl poked out, and her stomach bulged ominously.

_Never change, Stardust._

_They’re all dead. In Fire Nation raids._

_Trust the Spirits._

_Jyn, my child…_

_You can make it right._

“Shut up!” she hissed, pressing her fingers to her temples. Coruscant. Papa. The tonfas in her hands shook and clattered onto the roof. Yelling started from below.

Jyn dropped to the ground. Kicking the back door open with one foot, she seized a sack of rice. Heaving it over her shoulder, she turned. The little girl was there. Her thick black hair was pulled into two braids. Large black eyes wide with fear.

She darted around, scooping up her fallen tonfas along the way. Jyn ran to the edge of the village. Lifting her mask, she vomited onto the thick mountain grass.

Then she went to find Bodhi.

He was sitting by the fire in the mountain forest, nibbling on something. Jyn dropped the bag unceremoniously beside him. She’d stowed her weapons and mask in a tree trunk before she’d approached. She stepped past him.

“Jyn.”

Something in his voice stopped her.

“These people are starving. Everyone West of Jedha is starving. There are Rebels who…”

Coruscant. Papa. A grave for Mama. “I’ve noticed.”

“Jyn, I know you’ve been looking at the map. About what to do next.”

“And what about it?”

“They say the Avatar was seen in the Southwest.” Unbidden, Jyn paused. “So, I was right. You’re still thinking about capturing the Avatar.”

She whirled around. Anger, foul and ugly, rose up in her. He had a family in Jedha. Someone who loved him. “And so what if I am?”

Bodhi stood. Jyn stepped backwards at the confidence, at the anger in his eyes. “So, what’s your plan, then, Jyn? Somehow, you’re going to capture two grown adults in a continent the size of half the world. Drag them and somehow get them onto a boat heading to the Fire Nation. And then what? Jyn, I am _begging_ you to stop and think!”

“It isn’t any of your business!” Jyn yelled.

 _“And then what, Jyn?”_ She flinched. Bodhi pointed a trembling finger at her. “Do you know what would’ve happened at the North Pole?”

She scowled. “I would’ve gotten Leia, the girl!”

“No, you would be dead, frozen in the blizzard! The only reason you’re alive is because the Avatar and friends decided to save you, because they’re good people, even though you’ve done _nothing_ to deserve it from them!”

“You wouldn’t understand! You have people who love you and they’re right there!”

Bodhi’s face crumpled. It could not be taken back. “You…do you think… Jyn, I… Oh, _fuck it_ ,” he snapped. “You’ll never see. You’re still following another destiny.”

“Being with my _family_ is _my_ destiny,” Jyn hissed. She saw something break between them, then, perhaps irreversibly.

“Is it? Or is it someone else’s orders? Who are you, Jyn Erso?”

She was silent. He said her name again, softer now. “What?”

“We can never go back to the Fire Nation. Not unless they lose the War. Or someone decides to use us as leverage.”

Coruscant. Papa. A grave for Mama.

It was slipping through her fingers like dust.

_You are the tool through which your father will learn obedience!_

She grabbed the reins of the ostrich horse. “Remember when we were part of Saw’s Partisans?” His voice struck her like a whip. “Jyn, what are you doing?”

And then what? What would happen?

As though in a dream, she threw her pack on, and leapt onto the ostrich horse’s back. “I’m going now,” she whispered. “Our time together is over.”

“Jyn!”

She kicked the side of the ostrich horse, and let the darkness swallow her.

  
Bodhi wiped the tears roughly from his face.

A part of him wanted to go after Jyn, his friend, his family for years now, but he would not. Perhaps this was what it meant to make things right. There were thousands of rebels across the Four Nations. He was just one drop in a vast ocean. And Jyn was just one person, in a sea of people.

He had followed her since he was a teenager, wan and thin and afraid of this new country that had seized his homeland, indentured to them forever. If she could not see that, then it was over, now. He had said his piece. Jyn was looking for her pale-faced own, and he was the shadowy imitation. He could have given up, then.

But he knew two words, in Galen’s last missive.

_Death Star._

He had acted too late at the North Pole. But he could make things right, if he only had the courage to do so. Jyn was lost. He would never see her again.

Bodhi picked up his pack, and began, slowly, to walk to Jedha.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unpopular opinion but I like Luminara and she deserved better than one episode centering her, giving her an unpleasant personality (to most people), and to then be literally put into a space fridge. 
> 
> Next chapter: it's ENFYS NEST TIME


	16. Interlude: Sandstorms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little bonus chapter: some Luke angst/foreshadowing, a smidgen of Cassian angst. Head over to the next chapter if you're uninterested!
> 
> I wrote this while procrastinating on the heavy edits for Book Three (it's really kicking my ass) and I was getting so annoyed at Luke "I can't kill my fascist dad" that I decided to write something focusing on Luke. Also, I just really like the Tusken Raiders.
> 
> Content warning: racist language

Luke dreams of sandstorms. Once, when he was a child (or more of a child, than he is now), he had crept from the homestead into the Tatooine sands. Too quiet, too damned quiet, Uncle Owen used to call him. He would not speak of the War. So Luke had left for the front, turning, somehow, westwards. The storm had been upon him in minutes, blasting up his sun-freckled arms, choking his nose and mouth. In the dream he is in Tatooine again. It is harsh and desolate and home, and he had always wanted to escape it.

He rides on the sand sailor as the storm spirals upwards. A thousand feet high of yawning yellow-orange mouths. Light flashes, red, orange, white hot. The sand tears his skin. The storm howls with a fury of a thousand lifetimes. Under his feet, the sailor begins to turn. Luke leaps. The storm seizes the craft. Luke watches it flip through the air, its silhouette dark against the clouds. It explodes into a thousand wooden splinters.

A piece slams into his face. His googles shatter, ripping straight off his face. Light explodes into his eyes, light and pain. He falls to his knees. Blood trails down, tasting it in his mouth. Luke finds himself looking up.

In dreams there are no choices. There are made by others, or they were made long before the dream began.

The girl is a teenager. Her hair is dark, flying around her face. The roundness of her belly stands out against her malnourished frame. She is so tired. Why is my surname different? Luke had asked once. At first, Uncle Owen says, it was your father’s name. But lately (months ago), Uncle Owen tells him, it was your grandmother’s.

The Tuskens watch. Luke howls, though what use are words to savages? Savages, the pale-faced Tatooine folk tell. The sandstorm crashes down, but the Tuskens, raiders and thieves of the meagre farmers and bloated kingpins, are untouched.

  
The Tuskens know Basic. How can they not? It is screamed as they fight, sobbed as they rob, spat as they wander through the Oases. For it was the pale-faced settlers who brought the tongue in. They who look at world and say the _Jundland Wastes_ , as though the desert is not its own mother.

The Tuskens know Basic. To choose not to speak it is to take the darkness back. This world of the pale-faced settlers is not a home. And part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to interpret the world as our own.

  
Luke dreams of sandstorms. In the long detour towards Savareen, they tell stories. Yarns, the old toothless Tatooine women would say, their pale faces turned weathered from the sun. Everyone could tell tales but him. Leia and Cassian have, of course, ‘the tiger shark’. But Cassian’s tales go on: ‘the hero twins’, ‘juan bobo and the dragon-horse of seven colours’, ‘nagual the shapeshifter and the night spirit’. Even Han can spin a yarn, an old Corellian folktale ‘the maiden of the sea’.

In the sandstorm, a crow flies unerringly through the red light. Luke knows the tale of Shirazad, who told a story every night to save her life. Shirazad charms the tribal chief with the familiar tales: the great bantha Spirit, the hungry fox-jackals and the cunning crow, the two sisters who jump rather than wed, but the crow grants them wings to fly far away. But they do not belong to them.

His family has held the homestead since his grandfather, Cliegg, since his grandfather’s grandfather, the saying goes. The Tuskens steal and pillage, and one day they will drive them far away into the cold, blue sea of the shoreline. The wind howls, tearing through his pale skin that he leaves open to the blinding suns.

Luke dreams of sandstorms. And the desert belongs to the Tuskens.

From the clouds he sees the dark sliver of the night sky. Leia, his sister is named. _Layla_ , the old Tusken word. Night.

The Tuskens roar. Luke knows, even though they speak nothing he understands. _Thief!_ The murderers cry, _thief!_ And the crow flies off, laughing, as she whispers, _my lord, give me more time, and I shall weave you a yarn of a thousand colours._

  
In the old tale, Shirazad charms her chieftain. She spins him tales every night to save her life. He pardons her, and they wed.

In the new tale, Shirazad charms her chieftain. She spins him tales of the great Bantha Spirit, she who gives milk and meat when the hungry, pale as bone fox-jackals, have stolen all the water. Of the willy crow, the shapechanger, who steals the krayt dragon’s pearl. He pardons her, and they wed. She bears him crow-sons, who raze the fox-jackals to the ground.

In the tale whispered by Tusken women, as they whisper freedom, Shirazad charms her chieftain. Trusting, he falls asleep next to her, and she slits his throat, flying away as a crow with her sister. They steal the great krayt dragon’s pearl, sleeping in the sand, who eats the fox-jackals, and chieftain’s men, one bone at a time.

 _My lord, give me more time_ , they whisper, _and I shall make the desert my own._

  
Luke dreams of sandstorms. He stands in the great gulfing valley hours out from the homestead. Never go there, and not in the other direction with the old hermit, either, Uncle Owen says. It’s a bad place. The sand shifts into patterns, forming the ridges of pale sun-weathered skin, the bleached bone hair, the voice that says, _no, it was not the Sand People._

Dagobah, Obi Wan reminds him.

From the sand of the bad place erupts the huge bulk of the krayt dragon. It swallows Obi Wan whole. There is no fear in this dream as the dragon looks upon Luke. The children of Tatooine, Tusken and settler alike, tell stories of krayt dragons in the sun, in the fire of the benders.

Luke dreams of sandstorms. This krayt dragon’s eyes are blue. They glow like ancient stars through the cut of the sand. Below it are the same blue eyes of Anakin Skywalker, dead before Luke’s time. But Luke knows those eyes, same as his own. Anakin. Kind, brave grandmother Skywalker, who named her swollen belly in that Tusken language. _Divine, inevitable._ And the dragon roars.

And the dragon is Vader, devouring Anakin Skywalker.

Uncle Owen once said that Luke had found a krayt dragon, as a little boy. I don’t remember, Luke told him. Course you don’t. Course you don’t. It was before you.

Luke dreams of sandstorms. He is smiling up at a krayt dragon, as though he were its great enemy, a sandcrawler, whom the Tuskens feared above all others. The dragon-Vader eats him as well.

They have camped at the broken coastline of Malachor, sandy and desolate, where no life can grow. A festival is happening in town. Avatar Day, a local tells them gleefully. Huge straw and wood effigies hang in the town square. Mace Windu, the Air Avatar before him, T’ra Saa, and them. The central effigy is a crudely-made masked figure, wearing red and black. The crowd roars as they set the effigies aflame. Luke watches his face burn, crumbling into dust.

“Why?” he yells. “Why would you hate the Avatar so?”

“Seize them!” an official cries. “Seize them, Avatar Revan’s new incarnation! World killer!”

Cassian and Han immediately jump in front of him. “What do you mean?”

“Avatar Revan, to end the Mandalorian Wars, unleashed her terrible power and cast this land into a barren wasteland for all time!” the official spits. “Murderers.”

“That’s not true!” Leia insists, as the Tusken whisper _thief!_ “The Avatar would _never_ do that.”

“Prove it.”

He owes this man no explanation. For who does the Avatar answer to? No, that is not true. The Avatar must answer to the world. They must.

He and Leia press their hands together, meditating. Wind swirls around them. Power. He hears a voice, great and sharp, emerge from his body – he is Avatar Revan, and she has come to speak her due. “It was me.”

And he sees Revan, fully masked, covered from her chin to her ankles in armour and fabric, standing before the assembled forces. “I miss you, Bastila,” she says softly. Without hesitation, she pulls heat, and sets the soldiers on fire.

At first, he sees that Revan wishes to go slowly, not give into the call of the flame, but the more heat surrounds more, the louder its song. The fire begs, the soldiers shimmer in the hot air, begging for death. Revan lets go. And Luke tastes her horror – and the joy.

The earth shakes and cracks beneath the inferno she has summoned, her eyes glowing white beneath her mask. And the Mandalorians, the Malachor natives, they burn, all the way into their bones. The living can be fuel, the fire is the great betrayer, whispering its need because it burnt only dead things. Liar. But how can she stop? “I had to end the War. By any means necessary.”

The burning of Malachor is mesmerizing. “But the Avatar, how can the Avatar, the Avatar is good -”

“The Avatar is born, and the Avatar is human,” Revan tells him. “It is our great blessing. What will you do with it?”

  
Luke dreams of sandstorms. In the howling wind, he is Revan, sundering the Earth and burning it anew. The Tuskens cry out, but they too are destroyed beneath the blaze.

And her (his) burning hands find a dark-haired woman, and they are kind and gentle. He dreams she is kissing her fingers, her mouth, she whispers, _Revan, Revan, where have you been?_

 _I am lost_ , Luke says, as Revan tells her, _I **was** lost, Bastila, I was lost, but you found me again._

Luke dreams of sandstorms. Bastila’s black hair grows red, red as fire, red as blood, her skin browns, and he kisses her. Then she ignites. Luke screams, touching his own burning face. The skin is cold, like metal, like a helmet – _you are his child too –_

“Luke.”

He woke, staring at the lean, haggard face of Cassian Andor. “You were going into the Avatar State in your sleep,” Cassian says. How has he never noticed how tired Cassian is? “What were you dreaming of?”

“Do you think I’m a bad person?” he asks before he can stop himself.

Something hunted crosses Cassian’s face for a moment. “No,” and he says it so forcefully Luke jumps, “No. I would know.”

The secret settles over them. Luke closes his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What can I say, I was feeling a lot about Luke and his family and settler-colonialism. Also, listen, Revan is a lady because I played her as woman in KOTOR, let me have my morally ambiguous lesbian Avatar. 
> 
> Where Anakin's name comes from is a big source of debate, but I like the two theories that it comes from the biblical "Anakim" or "Ananke", the Greco-Roman goddess of inevitability. I know "Juan Bobo" is a Puerto Rican folktale and not Meso-American, but my Mum told it to me as a kid so it's going in there.


	17. Book Two: Empire IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Enfys time baby! You are legally obligated to listen to her [incredible theme music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N5Lzq-F0qk).
> 
> To match with the other characters, Enfys has been aged down here to be eighteen-going on nineteen, one year younger than Luke and Leia (who are 19-20 across the span of the story). While Enfys' mother is dead in canon, I decided to resurrect her for this story, so Eira is an OC (since given that Solo bombed, I doubt we will ever see Enfys or her story again). 
> 
> Content warning: racist and sexist language

Savareen was a dusty desert port to the South of the Earth Kingdom. The buildings were weathered and decayed. What little remained was concentrated around a few squat buildings servicing the port and its travellers. It was a detour from Jedha, but they needed to find the airbending master. At the very least, it was an opportunity for Cassian to contact Bail and Fulcrum, the mysterious rebel handler he had never met.

Outside the town was a large bulletin board, freshly constructed. There were multiple wanted posters pinned. In the centre was the Avatar, the painting showing two pale twins with blonde and brown hair. None for him and Han yet. There was one for Kestrel, for liberating the Avatar (Cassian recalled the horrible taste of river frog), and to his shock, two for Erso and Bodhi. He read: _wanted for aiding the rebellious Northern savages against the glorious occupation by the Fire Nation._

The painting of Jyn looked much younger; it had probably been based off an old painting left in the Fire Nation. They had gotten her eyes wrong.

Cassian made sure his water skin and knives were secure as they entered Savareen. Luke and Leia threw their hoods up, sticking close. “Any ideas?” Luke said.

“Find a bar, and start listening,” Cassian said.

The bar was as dusty as the streets outside. The wooden ramshackle building had several low tables, and a grizzled bartender. Customers sat on the floor and drank, ate, and gambled on Dejarik, Sabaac, and some local game using round wooden pieces. Most looked like off-duty Fire Nation soldiers, as well as downtrodden local port workers, and bounty hunters. Sad-eyed local women in wisps of clothes spoke to some of them, thin and hungry. He saw Luke and Leia slip coins into the hands of those that approached them. Relief, perhaps the first they had felt in a long time, fell across the women’s faces. The desolation left by the War sickened him, especially to those most considered worthless in most places.

Cassian scrutinized the menu, skipped over the top-seller – diluted cactus juice? – and ordered four liquors. They drank slowly, and listened. Soon, Cassian and Han found themselves playing a game of sabaac with two Fire Nation soldiers, while Luke and Leia blended into the walls. Cassian was decent, but Han was clearly an old hand. He let the other man lead. Savareen was used by the Fire Nation as a point to ship out raw materials from parts of the middle, mostly desert and grassland Earth Kingdom. The men asked few questions. They would rather be anywhere but here.

“Must be boring business,” Cassian said, his voice dim-witted and friendly.

“You’d think,” one of the soldiers, a hulking pale blond man. “But there’s the Cloudriders.”

“Cloudriders?”

“Airbenders. Maybe from out West, or the South, who knows? Those savages are nomads, aren’t they?”

Cassian shuffled his cards to conceal his disgust. “Whatever it is,” the soldier continued, “I always thought they were about peace and love and banthashit. But that Enfys Nest and her bitch mother – they’re a bunch of masked pirates. They keep attacking the convoys.”

“Surely the might of Fire trumps Air,” Cassian said innocently. Han’s jaw was white with tension.

“You ever go up against a horde of ten ton flying bison?” The soldier shook his head. “We keep losing convoys, and the Fire Lord isn’t happy after we lost the North Pole. And if it’s not them, it’s Crimson Dawn, one of the Five Syndicates.”

Before Cassian could speak, he heard the floor creak behind them. A knife slid across Han’s throat.

Han froze. Standing behind him was a pale-skinned man with mottled skin, dressed in tattered brown robes. One of his eyes was glass. “Hello, Solo,” he purred. “Jabba’s gonna pay me well for this.”

Cassian stabbed the man in the thigh. The bounty hunter howled. Han snapped his head back. The bounty hunter staggered. Grabbing the hunter’s knife, Han put it right through his chest. Nobody in the bar flinched. “Bounty hunter after you, kid?” the soldier commiserated, chugging his liquor, “Tried to sell to the crime lords?”

“Something like that,” Han said through his teeth. Luke and Leia had leapt to their feet. Cassian folded, gripping Han’s arm.

It was only when they were in an alleyway that Leia burst out, “What was that?”

“Bounty hunter. Means Jabba’s put a price on my head,” Han snapped.

“Who in the Moon’s name is Jabba?”

“The guy I was _supposed_ to pay off when I delivered you to the North Pole.”

“Oh, so this is _our_ fault now?”

Han scowled and stormed back towards where they’d left the animals. “You’re thinking of leaving?” Leia continued, “Han, we need you!”

“Well I’m not going to be much use if I’m dead!”

“Enough!” Luke said. The two stopped short, breathing hard. Leia’s cheeks were bright red, as were Han’s ears. “Like it or not Han, we don’t have the money to pay off Jabba. You’re better off staying here with us to watch your back.”

“Oh, not because you’d miss me or anything?” Han said. The tension eased from his body, though. He looked down at Leia and muttered, “Sorry for yelling.”

Leia grunted. “It would do you some good to remember we’re on your side and not jump down our throats.”

There was a short pause.

“Sorry, Leia,” Han said, more sincerely.

“Well alright,” Leia said with dignity, “Let’s get back to camp. I think there’s a messenger station here, Cassian.”

Nodding, Cassian separated from the group. The messenger station had several hungry looking birds roosting. Tossing a few coins to the attendant, Cassian selected the two healthiest ones. He scrawled out two messages. To Bail Organa, he wrote: _Found airbending master. No intel on weapon. En route to more information._

To Fulcrum, he wrote: _Potential alliances to be formed in Yavin Swamp and Savareen Cloudriders. Also, Sana Starros._

As he tossed the birds into the air, he wondered again on Fulcrum’s identity. There were rumours that Fulcrum was a woman, but hardly anyone had ever met them in person. Then he walked to their camp, listening to anything he heard. Two pieces in particular sounded promising.

Han was stoking the fire as Luke and Leia prepared dinner. Artoo and Kay were napping as Chewie kept watch on the horizon. Threepio sat on Leia’s shoulder. The map was spread out on the ground. Han’s eyes kept flicking over it. It was a few days sail to Wohbani, from which you could enter the Tatooine desert. Leia glared at Han at every twitch he made towards the map.

“So…” Han drawled, “What’s our plan?”

“We find the Cloudriders,” Luke said.

“And how do you suppose we do that?”

“They attack the convoys, don’t they?” Leia said, “We stake out the route, we wait, we find them. We just need to find out where the convoys go.”

Cassian smiled thinly. “I might have an answer there.”

  
It took them three days to find a good spot to watch the convoy trail. The ridge of a mountain provided them with shelter as they made camp. Then it was another two days wait for a convoy to pass. He and Leia spent most of the time practicing their sandbending – they were now able to create a small-scale messy replica of the Northern Water Tribe city – while Cassian returned to Savareen every day. Han was oddly quiet. Twice, Luke had tried to question him on his recognition of the masked airbender, but Han rebuffed him. The bounty hunter was dominating his thinking.

Luke sincerely wished Han and Leia would just have it out at last so that he didn’t need to constantly endure their cold formality with each other.

Troubling also was that Leia refused to explain what she had seen in the Yavin Swamp. Though their final acceptance of their destiny in the North Pole had made it easier to sense each other’s thoughts and feelings, Leia was keeping hers stubbornly locked away. Oddly, she kept interrogating him about their father.

The truth was that Luke didn’t know that much about Anakin Skywalker. Ben had explained he had been a powerful bender, probably a firebender given the stories and their own pale skin and fair hair. Luke had guessed Anakin had opposed the War and been murdered by Vader, dying a good man. He'd been having weird dreams about Vader, lately.

There was no point in dwelling on it. They’d identified Dagobah as the swampland near the Eastern Air City of Bespin. After they went to Jedha, they would head there.

But first, the airbending master. Luke felt his heart leap.

Finally, they heard the rumbling in the distance. It was dusk. The group crawled up onto the edge of the ridge. Muscular mongoose lizards were shackled to heavy metal carriage trains, pulling them through the desert. Fire Nation soldiers walked on top of them, eyeing the skies. Mounted komodo rhino cavalry marched in step.

There was a shout from one of the guards. “Cloudriders! Enfys Nest!”

Six sky bison, sandy-white against the dunes, were emerging from the clouds. They dodged volleys of fire as they came down to bear on the convoy. Masked figures in browns, yellows, and oranges rode the ten-ton creatures. Most of them were women, but a few men were sprinkled in amongst them. And at the front was her – straight and wiry. The Cloudriders were bending great orbs of air around their bison to block the fire as they sent soldiers flying.

Gliders detached themselves from the bison as they began to pick off the soldiers with air slices, blasts, and explosive breaths. The mongoose lizards shrieked. The convoy accelerated. The air was filled with fire as the rebels dodged. Fire smashed into a canyon wall, sending rocks everywhere. The leader began to bend, sucking the rocks away from her tribe.

The leader’s voice reverberated across the canyon, magnified by some unknown power to a deep bass thrum. “*Enough! I’m going in*!”

Tossing open her glider, she jumped off the bison. Catching it, she soared and landed in a roll atop the supply train. She dodged the flames with unbelievable agility, striking the guards with her staff. She was the wind itself, impossible to catch. With a concentrated air blast, she sent the head guard flying. Leia gasped.

“She’s incredible,” Luke breathed.

Chains dropped down from the sky bison, which their leader began to secure to the convoy. As more guards climbed atop the train, the mongoose lizards shrieked again. One of the airbenders had cut some of their harnesses loose. The supply train tipped, sending guards flying. The girl and a few guards managed to grab the side.

“We have to help them!” Luke yelled.

“Luke, wait -”

Bending a wave of sand, Luke shot down the ridge, landing with a thud atop the tipping supply train. “Avatar!” one of the guards yelled. Luke bent waves of sand to block them, accidentally sending the masked girl toppling once more. A knife clattered out of her grip and was lost into the sand.

“Get out of the way!” she yelled, leaping back up. Luke winced in apology.

The Cloudrider soared over his head. The convoy was racing towards a gorge, passable only by a narrow strip of rock. She was trying to remove the harnesses by hand, he realised. And he’d just lost her her knife. The Fire Nation soldiers were climbing back up.

“Release the cables!” Luke cried, “Release the cables or you’ll die!”

The Cloudrider yelled something in the Air Nomad language. The cables began to drop. Seizing him by the back of his shirt, she ran, accelerating herself through airbending. Two Cloudriders grabbed them as she leapt off the wrecked supply train, pulling them onto a sky bison. She dropped him unceremoniously onto the saddle.

Luke twisted as they flew and looked down. His friends and their animal companions were sitting in another saddle; he guessed that Leia had sandbent them onto one and probably bullied the rider to take them. He turned back to the leader. “Hi, I’m Luke Skywalker, I’m here to find an airbending teacher,” he said.

“Stay at the back of the saddle,” the girl said shortly, tugging the reins. The amplification had faded, and now her voice was higher and distinctly female. Luke sat. The other Cloudriders aboard this sky bison eyed him. At least, he imagined they were, given the masks. They were speaking to the leader. Luke heard the name _Enfys_.

At last, the sky bison reached a flat sandy shore. It was a protected inlet. Embroidered white round tents were scattered across the beach. The sky bison touched down in the sea. The Cloudriders slid off and waded through the shallow water. Luke followed. The sky bison gave a happy bellow and rolled over.

He had just reached his friends when Enfys turned around, cape flying out. “What were you thinking? We might’ve lost the convoy now,” she said brittlely.

“I’m sorry,” Leia said quickly, “My brother can be reckless. We wanted to meet you. We’re the Avatar…”

A Cloudrider came out of one of the tents and made some hand gestures – a sign language. “Hold that thought. Come with me,” she said stiffly.

Inside the tent was a middle-aged woman with brown skin. She had tight brown curls that spread out around her head. Both her legs had been replaced by carven wooden replicas. At their expressions, she said, “Firebenders. Please, sit.”

They did. Enfys removed her helmet. Beneath it was a young woman, probably his and Leia’s age, with tan skin and tight red curls. A smattering of freckles covered her broad nose and soft cheeks. Luke thought he quite liked her face. Han blinked at her. “Hey, you grew up kid!”

“Solo?” Enfys said.

“My name is Eira Nest, the former leader of the Cloudriders. Avatar, why have you come here?” the woman cut in.

“Well, we had a vision in the swamp -”

“What my brother is trying to say,” Leia said, in her royal voice, “Is that we believe that your…daughter?” The woman nodded. “Is our airbending master, who will help us to defeat the Fire Lord.”

Eira exchanged a look with her daughter. Luke nodded emphatically. “We were told by the Spirits that it is her destiny to become our teacher.” This was stretching the truth, but Luke decided that it was necessary.

“I can’t,” Enfys said. She shook her head. “I have a duty here, to the fight against the Fire Nation. My place is here in Savareen.”

“But -”

“No, Avatar,” she said. “We’re your allies. But I can’t teach you.”

“Please, stay the night with us. The desert is treacherous after dark,” Eira said, eyeing her daughter, “We will bring you to the next village in the morning.”

Reluctantly, they stood, and followed Enfys.

  
Enfys removed her gauntlets, armour, and cape, folding them neatly into a pile next to her bedroll. Her aunts, blood or no, were getting ready for bed as well. With the help of others, she lifted her mother from her chair easily, and placed her down on a bedroll. Kissing her mother’s forehead, she stood. The tent was sparse, containing only some crates of personal artefacts, and a small altar, under which Enfys reverently placed her helmet. Then she slid down to lie beside her mother, listening to the soft breathing of the women around her, tender as a kiss. She still felt hot and sticky and irritated from their failure. Enfys breathed slowly, allowing cool air to gently lick across her skin. It was a meditative technique her mother had taught her as a young child, consciously relaxing her body until she extinguished some of her anger.

“You should go with them.”

Well so much for that. Enfys rolled over and looked at her. If the others were awake and heard, they kept silent. “Mumma, don’t tell me you believe in the will of the Spirits now too.”

“I don’t, but listen to me…” her mother said, brushing a warm hand across her cheek.

“You always said that was why our people left the Southern City – that we didn’t want to detach ourselves. That we were like Avatar T’ra Saa said, warriors, not sages,” Enfys recited, watching her mother sigh.

“I believe she said guardians, actually,” her mother said wryly. “But Enfys… Savareen is just one place.”

She sat up, glaring down. “Are you saying it doesn’t matter? That everything we’ve been doing – it just doesn’t _matter_?”

“You’re putting words in my mouth,” Eira said. A part of her immediately withered at that voice. It was the voice of the women who wore the helmet and armour, who had taken Enfys to the top of the sandy dune and said, harsh as a typhoon, n _o one is going to save you, Enfys. No mystical being will catch you when you fall from the air._

And as she had trained beneath that blazing desert sun, she had known it to be true in the mothers and sisters her tribe had lost, in the three hundred years since they had journeyed North, mother to daughter taking up the mantle, as many Air Nomads did. It was there in her mother’s splintered legs bleeding red on the white sand, in the shadow of the Fire Nation and its endless tide of misery, in the crime syndicates that cut her people’s tongues when they bled dry what scraps the Fire Nation left.

And here, the Avatar, come to try to convince her that balance could still be found.

“Enfys, my love, destiny is a funny thing. It is a current you must chart yourself. I don’t think teaching is your destiny – but I care about the _now_. This is someone who has all the power in the world, and you could give it to them,” her mother said, softer. “Do you realise who you’re rejecting?”

“And Savareen? I should just abandon it?”

“Rebellion is all hands that raise against evil, from the farmgirl who patches up a soldier, to the woman who strikes down a tyrant, to the Avatar.”

It was such a tempting story. She remembered when her mother had taken her to the great temple in the Eastern City, had named the statues of the last four Avatars, from Mace Windu to T’ra Saa, to Revan and Nomi Sunrider. Air, Water, Earth and Fire. That each had found teachers from the Four Nations, bonds that lasted lifetimes. Perhaps even transcended them.

But it was a story, all the same.

“Mumma,” she said gently, taking her mother’s hand, “Who would take my place if I went? We were so lost when you were hurt…”

“You were twelve, Enfys,” Mum whispered, “It is time for me to lead again. And the Cloudriders are a _group_. You’ve always taken on more than you need to.”

“Mumma, you can’t even fly!”

“I can ride a sky bison as well as any other,” she said sharply, “And my arms are still functioning. And I’ve had some ideas about modifying my glider…”

“I couldn’t -”

“Enfys.” She stopped and looked at her mother’s warm brown face and dark hair. Perhaps in other cultures she would have wondered at the identity of her father, but that was not the Air Nomad way. She was a warrior, like her mother before her. “You do not carry the rebellion single-handedly on your back. We are strong.”

She rolled over and would say no more. Enfys listened to her people breathe.

In the morning, Enfys rose. She wiped the sweat from her mother’s body with a damp cloth, then did the same to her own, grazing the constellations of freckles that blossomed against the red-gold hairs on her skin. Some cooked, while others helped the children get ready. One of her aunts rubbed oil in Enfys’ curls as Enfys braided a little niece’s hair, and then she did the same for her. Women laughed and sang, and Enfys thought _this is **home** , how can she ask me to give it up?_ They ate a soup of bitter leaves, nuts, and dried shrimps cooked in oil, before Enfys donned her armour. They sat before the altar of wooden masks – the desert buffalo and jackalopes and giant rhinoceros beetles – and prayed, as was custom, for good harvest. In the centre was a carving for T’ra Saa, painted to match her brown skin and tight yellow-brown curls, and deep orange robe. T’ra Saa who had lived three hundred years to destroy slavers, crime lords, and petty despots.

As she stepped outside the tent, she found Skywalker waiting. Behind him was his twin, the Water Tribe man, and Solo. “We’d like to offer our help,” Skywalker said, “To go after that convoy.”

Enfys regarded them for a moment. “They crashed in the desert. If the Cloudriders move quickly, they may still be there. But what help can you bring?”

The other woman lifted her chin. “We have the Avatar, an airbending master, and Cassian is a master waterbender.” She smiled. “I’m Leia. Leia Organa.”

“Enfys,” she said rather unnecessarily. It seemed that she was smooth-talker to her brother’s more reckless nature. She would make for an easier pupil than Skywalker, who she’d had half a mind to beat with her staff when he’d landed on the supply train. “A waterbender in the desert, though.”

“Your bison can carry water,” this Cassian said. “Arm me and I can cut through their supply chains easier than your knives and staffs.”

“And you, Solo?” Enfys said. She could not help grinning. “Thirty armed men, maybe?”

The smuggler shrugged in that careless way of his. “Missed you too, Nest.”

“And what will I give you all in exchange?”

Skywalker shook his head. “Nothing. We just want to help. That’s why I first left Tatooine – to help stop the War.”

His transparent honesty moved her. You could trust these people. They understood what the War meant. Enfys planted her staff in the stand. “We have to work to do then. The convoy, and then… your lessons.”

He smiled. She would live with this decision, and hope it led her true.

  
Later, when the battle was won and Cassian had healed the injured, he returned to Savareen and went to the messenger tower. A bird he recognized was waiting for him. Keeping his scarf wrapped around his face, he extracted the scroll and swiftly left the dusty port. Soldiers were already gossiping about the daring heist taken by the Cloudriders and the Avatar. He decoded the message quickly.

_Agent in the Fire Nation. Lady Mon Mothma. Gathering dissenters to retake the throne when the Fire Lord falls. Her intel says Jedha operation almost finished. Weapon completion imminent._

He shoved the message into his coat, to destroy later. 

Ahead awaited the group, alongside Enfys, her mother, and a few of the other Cloudriders on their sky bison. “Take this with you,” Eira Nest was saying. She held two beautiful gliders. “The Avatar will need them.”

“We can’t take these,” Leia said.

“They served our fallen sisters,” Eira insisted, “Now they will do the same to you.”

Enfys embraced her mother, a desperate movement that Cassian almost envied. Then she clipped her helmet back on. “Where do we go from here?” she said.

“How do you do that with your voice?” Luke interrupted.

“Oh, bending air currents for sound amplification.”

“That’s brilliant. You’ll have to teach us that.”

The masked figure seemed almost embarrassed by the request, turning instead to look as Cassian. The answer had not changed.

“East. To Jedha.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha, Cassian adopting an extremely idealistic teenager to the team...I'm sure that's not gonna activate his crushing guilt...not at all...
> 
> T'ra Saa is a Jedi from the Legends continuity who was Mace Windu's Jedi Master. Also, I did not intend the shippiness of Enfys/Luke when I started writing this fic but as the chapters progressed I was like huh, that's interesting. It's mostly contained to the background, but I for one remember the Legends novel where Luke falls in love with a force ghost inside in a computer, so Luke seeing a girl in a swamp and then seeing her beat up fascists with a stick? He would. 
> 
> Next chapter: Jyn's journey alone (get ready friends, Jyn is really going through it)


	18. Book Two: Empire V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jyn's journey alone - the chapter I've been most anxious to post. References: Jorus C'Baoth is a Legends continuity character, I just picked his name as Jyn's firebending instructor. Liya and Gerel are OCs, their community was inspired by Mongolia. I also made a big mistake because my trilingual ass reads "Lynna" as "Li-ya-na" and not "Lee-yahn-a", even though it's said in Rogue One, a movie I've seen multiple times. Let's just pretend it's pronounced Liyana here. One dialogue line taken from the episode "Zuko Alone". 
> 
> Heavy content warning for this chapter: this chapter contains references to torture, child abuse/neglect, sexual harassment of women and children, exploitation of women and children, Lyra's death, and sexist language. Please read with caution.

Jyn’s head swam as she kept the ostrich horse moving. She had eaten through her ration days ago. Her throat was dry with thirst. Here, as she travelled eastwards across the northern part of the Earth Kingdom, it was all steeps and yurts and plains. Everything blended together.

Never change Stardust, never change, never -

Her father’s back, hunched and sad. “Can you keep a secret, Stardust?” he had whispered.

Tell me you love me, she had thought then. Tell me we will go away from here, from the cold machines you love so dearly. Look at me.

Her hands were slipping off the reins.

In the distance was a dusty collection of tents. The people in this huge landlocked swath of the Earth Kingdom were nomadic, and no wonder. There was hardly anything that could grow in the harsh sand and steepes. What were their names? She had drifted across this place without absorbing a thing. She set course, biting her lip so hard she tasted blood. Her firebending instructor, a concession allowed by the Fire Lord, had always said she was undisciplined. Your mind is always tangled up and you have no respect for anyone, he had snapped.

What did they expect? She had been raised as a hostage for eight years under Krennic’s thumb, had been kept locked up for long stretches when she misbehaved. No amount of fine clothes or loaded generosity could undo that she was a tool.

Krennic’s tool. Tarkin’s tool. Palpatine’s tool. Saw’s tool. Even Galen’s.

_Who are you, Jyn Erso?_

The yurts were ramshackle. Perhaps once before the Fire Nation incursions they had been splendid. Thin, starved animals watched her. How many of these had she passed through? When would she reach the cold rocky steepes that led inexorably towards Jedha? It felt as if she had travelled this sad land for an eternity, that this was a dream crafted by her young self, safe in the tropical heat of Lah’mu.

She passed a group of Earth Kingdom mercenaries loudly playing some gambling game. Protecting the group she guessed. Tethering the ostrich horse to a water pit, she let it drink. What she wouldn’t give to sink her own head into that filthy water. Jyn could feel the eyes of the mercenaries on her back.

“Looking for shelter, traveller?” An old man asked, emerging from a yurt.

“How much for water, food and feed for the horse?” she asked, switching into the Cato Nemodia tongue. She wasn’t sure what they spoke here in the plains, but Cato Nemodia was a Northern city, so she counted on that.

He responded in the same, though accented. “How much you got?”

She pulled two copper coins from her purse. “Not enough for food and drink. I can give you two bags of feed, though.”

Jyn dropped the coins into his hand. Behind her, she heard a dull thud. Her hand flexed on one of the tonfa strapped to her hip as she turned. One of the men had slapped a young girl. The girl glared at him, pitch black eyes blazing. “You’re a pretty thing, but you’ve got a mouth on you,” one mercenary said, gripping the girl’s bruised jaw. “Give me a kiss.”

“Let her go.”

“What’s it to you, bitch?”

“I said let her go.” Jyn pulled both tonfas from her belt. The girl’s teeth bit down on the mercenary’s hand. She wrenched free and took off into the encampment.

“You cost me, girl!” Jyn seized her coins back from the old man (he had stood there and just watched, done nothing) and tossed them into their earthenware bowl.

“There,” she said, feeling sickened, like it was her who had bought a girl and not these filth, “Now you’re compensated.”

She undid the reins of her ostrich horse and strode away.

When she was a little ways past, the little girl popped up. She couldn’t have been older than eight. Her thick wavy dark hair hung past her shoulders, and she beamed as she looked up at Jyn, eyes crinkling into half-moons in her round face. She was carrying a bag of food. “You were so cool! Oh, you said you were hungry to that mean animal keeper! I’ll take you to our yurt to eat, my mum loves guests!”

Jyn’s stomach growled. She allowed the girl to take the reins. “Does that happen whenever you go in to trade with your people?”

The little girl looked down. “Yeah...”

“Does your mother know?”

The girl shook her head. “If I don’t go, no one will come bring us food...”

Jyn was quiet, her cheeks and face feeling hot.

A rough skinned older woman in an embroidered dark green dress was milking a yak with small antlers. She looked up as her daughter ran over. “Minii eej, this lady just stood up to the mercenaries! She has these cool sticks!”

“You’re not from around here, traveller,” the woman said warily, dusting her hands on her breeches.

“No,” Jyn said, “I’m from the South. I’m Lynna.”

“Me too!” The little girl cried, “Well, Liya, close enough!”

The woman’s face softened. “My name is Gerel. Anyone who challenges those brutes is enough for me. They’re vultures, preying on people like us while the real soldiers are off fighting on the front. Please, stay to eat.”

“I have to go,” Jyn said. These starving people. Bodhi’s face swam into her vision.

“The tent needs fixing. Help me with it, and consider us even for food.”

Jyn nodded. She soon came to the obvious problem that she was horrible at sewing. Everything had been provided on Coruscant, and Saw’s army had few women – and too many men who considered those skills a humiliation for men. Wincing every few moments, she and Gerel began mending. Liya was tending to some ostrich horses. “The mercenaries harass her sexually in town,” Jyn said without preamble.

Gerel’s lips tightened. “Then I am further in your debt.”

“Nobody does anything?”

“They’re scared,” Gerel said viciously, “A little girl and a woman are always a fair price for what they need. It’s the way everywhere.”

The needle drew blood. “Yes,” Jyn said.

  
For the first six months, they keep her in a room in a sumptuous home on Coruscant. She had screamed and thrashed and bitten anyone who came too close by. She sets the curtains on fire, and then the dress of one of the maids. She would not remove her peasant tunic and trousers and wear the long dresses offered her. They cycled through endless attendants, uncertain of how to handle her – hostage or honoured guest, as Krennic had promised. They touched her with hard, brusque hands to eat and wash and sleep. None of them loved her, cared for her fate.

The man himself visits her only once in that time. Jyn hates him. He had murdered her mother. Who had gathered the body? Who had lit the pyre? There had been no funeral, no mourning, Lyra’s memory shuttled off as though it had never existed. Where was her Papa? Why would he not come for her? If Lyra’s arrow had only hit true… Her skin crawls when he cups her cheek. “Now, you will be a good girl, child,” he says, “And I’ll let you see your father next week.”

“Why?” she hisses.

“You’ll make Galen obey,” Krennic says. His eyes shine with a kind of mania.

In a sickening revelation, Jyn considers that Krennic loves her, in the way a man could love a prized hawk or a sharp sabre. A tool. She does not want this loathsome man to be the closest bit of humanity she saw anymore.

She puts on one of the silk dresses when a week passes, bright and hot. The courtyard of the house has a small turtle duck pond. Galen is waiting on a basalt stone bench, carefully smoothened until it shone. He looks a thousand years old. “Stardust, my Stardust,” he says, and embraces her. His voice is a tired croak. “Are they feeding you? Treating you well?”

Soldiers walk around the courtyard. Even at eight, Jyn understands what it means to have a life that is not your own. “Yes, Papa,” she says. “Mama…did they…”

“I don’t know,” he whispers, “Oh, my Jyn... We will need to find you a firebending master, if you behave herself.”

A cool sensation flows down her body. Distantly, she feeds the turtle ducks fighting over a scrap of bread. “Of course, Papa.”

“Everything I do, I do it to protect you,” he repeats, as he said six months before, when she had run across the volcanic lava flats, before a cold armoured form had plucked her up like a rotten fruit.

They speak on the weather and the glorious health of the Fire Nation. Then he stands and walks away, his back a long stiff line. She sees her father twice more. They write letters that are aggressively monitored. He suggests she apply herself to the learning of numerous Earth Kingdom and Air Nomad languages. Soon his suggestions are of the operations and military protocol of different classes of steamships, the Fire Nation colonies, the War’s progress, and the military system and ranks. The net around her is loosened. She wanders Coruscant accompanied constantly by guards, studying the gridded streets of basalt, wood and earthen homes and spires, the columnaded buildings and statues of the upper levels. She learns to play Dejarik, Sabaac, to drink and to move softly through the cage.

Her father loves her, this ghostly man whose face she sometimes forgets. She never returns to Lah’mu.

_I trust your lessons are going well, Jyn._

_Of course, Father, Master J’orus informs me my progress is excellent._

(I set parts of the training ring ablaze because someone called me a whore’s daughter and Master J’orus slapped me for failing his test again)

One day Jyn turns twelve and is allowed to meet her father again. An Earth Kingdom boy, barely a teenager, is beside her father, fidgeting in the crisp red and black suit of petty officers. “This is Bodhi,” her father says, “Krennic has accepted that you may be allowed to visit the colonies, accompanied by a guard.”

Her eyes slide to the brown face. Bodhi looks at her with neither pity nor contempt, only a naked, warm curiosity. “It will be good for my education,” she says neutrally.

“Bodhi is an excellent navigator. He will be with you.”

“Of course.”

In a breath, he asks, “Stardust, can you keep a secret?”

She loves her father.

The black ash city of Coruscant and bejeweled black house are behind her. Naboo is ahead. They are only names on a map to her, distant as her father’s smile in which she constantly orbits around, never able to reach. What did his embrace feel like, his arms, his laughter? She did not know, but the memory (the wish) sustained her as his dreams sustained Krennic.

The message to Saw Gerrera burns in the lining of her dress. She watches her father’s back as the steamship leaves the harbour. Bodhi smiles at her. She will take it.

  
Jyn shifted uncomfortably in her sleep, in the dream that was not quite memory. Her father was a thousand feet tall. She could hear something scraping near her.

She cracked her eyes open. Gerel’s sleeping form. Her pack, wide open. Slipping to her feet soft as a cat, Jyn stepped out into the chilly night. A tiny form was out in the tough high grass, swinging.

“Those are too big for you.”

Liya squeaked and dropped the tonfas. Scrunching up her face, she said, “I want to fight!”

You’re too little, Jyn almost said, then stopped herself. The world was not a safe place for little girls, in a war zone doubly so. She would learn the cruelty of men, or she would suffer. Instead, “What would you do to those men?”

Softly, Liya said, “I wish there were a place where no men looked at me. I’ve only got this yurt and old Temujin.”

She gestured at the yak. From her belt Jyn pulled a small dagger. She handed it to Liya. The little girl clutched it and looked up at her with wide eyes. “You strike once,” Jyn said, “And you make it count. I’ll show you.”

They grappled long into the early hours of the morning.

As day broke, they returned to the yurt. Liya slipped the dagger into her trouser pocket. Gerel passed Jyn a small box. “Enough to get you through a few meals.”

The hot flush filled her body. “I couldn’t...”

“Please,” Gerel said, “Yesterday you save my daughter and me. Today I feed you. Tomorrow you save another girl.”

Hope. The word stung. She had chased the Avatar halfway around the world on a vain, selfish hope. She wondered if that same insane feeling had grasped the Water Tribe man in his ruined village. Never change, Stardust.

Jyn took the box and slipped it into her pack. Heaving herself up onto the ostrich horse, she waved at Liya, and rode off.

She is in the tall grass of the isolated cove on Lah’mu. They have just seen the harsh black ship coming towards the black volcanic sand. Her Papa is out there, trying to buy them time.

Somewhere out there, in the grass, is Sniksnak, her little dragon-horse toy with button eyes. Her mother’s kyber necklace is a heavy stone on her neck as she crouched. “Why are you going?” Jyn cries.

“They’re going to search the whole island,” Lyra says harshly, “You need to get to the bunker. Can you do that? Promise me, Jyn!”

She nods. _Trust the Spirits._

(Over a decade later, under the towering figure of the Ocean Spirit, the Spirit’s rage and grief, Jyn thinks perhaps those are only things she really can trust)

The man in white is talking, but Jyn is not listening. She could see her mother creeping through the grass, notching an arrow. Kill him, she thinks wildly.

“Oh look, here’s Lyra, back from the dead. It’s a miracle.”

Everyone is shouting now, and Jyn cannot breathe. “You will never win,” her mother says.

The arrow hits the man in white’s shoulder at the same time a lightning bolt hits Lyra through the heart.

Her father screams. The grass is smoking. She jerks upwards. The fire boils in her, and the hate is stronger than the fear. “Your grandma was a firebender too,” Mama had said, “It’s in the blood!”

“They have a child, a firebender! Find it!”

Jyn runs. The field is burning now. The soldiers are frightened. They should be. A heavy arm, in black leather and metal, plucks her from the ground. “I found her!”

Jyn fights and kicks but she is too small. They are dragging them towards the ship across the lava flats. Her father is holding her tight against him, his face ashen. He says nothing as she cries and screams. The soldiers are carrying their things, faces covered by helmets and face plates.

On the black sand is the body that had been Mama, had been Lyra Erso. Death had not been peaceful. Her eyes are open. Sand is gritted through her dark hair. Her face is a rictus of pain. Salt water sloshes over her fallen form. Jyn remembers the lessons her father gave her when they found the washed-up corpse of a manatee whale. How the stomach bloats with gas and the skin begins to flake and peel.

Perhaps the Ocean will be gentler than the heat of Sól’s Fire; perhaps she will be washed away into the sea, a prison but a softer one, nonetheless.

(Years later, when the Ocean tries to take Bodhi away, she thinks that she had been mistaken as a child, that the Ocean is as cold and unforgiving as the Water Tribe man’s eyes.)

Nobody takes Lyra’s body.

In every meeting with Saw that follows, from the first moment he cried, “Jyn, my child! I looked for you! Where did you go?” Jyn wants to scream, to accuse, _where did **you** go? Would you have looked for me if you had known how useful I could be?_

She learns how to fight without bending, with weapons, with her hands, with her teeth. She inducts Bodhi into the roaring anger that is Saw Gerrera’s Partisans, and hisses at anyone who gets the idea to take advantage of his kindness. In turn he shields her from any who try to make her dance like the sad-eyed girls they hire from the towns.

“I would never let you become that!” Saw thunders when he discovers this plot, but he does not save the girls, either, and Jyn wonders if it is because they too, are useless.

(It is Bodhi and her who feed them and free them, and if Bodhi was not totally uninterested in the female sex, she, thirteen and bitter, would have loved him)

Jyn loves her father. She does. One day the War will end, and they will return to black beach of Lah’mu, and they will burn Lyra’s bones, and, and, and –

  
Jyn was startled from her slumber by the thundering of hooves. She had curled up on the grass a short ride from the tent village, exhausted from lack of sleep. She kept dreaming, half-memory, half-fear. Something was slipping in her, and she didn’t think she had the strength to hold it back.

“Lynna!”

It was Gerel. Jyn sat up at the terror on the woman’s face. She was clutching a large kitchen knife in her hand. “It’s Liya! The thugs came back when you left and took her, and she pulled a knife on them! They said if she’s old enough to fight, she’s old enough to -”

Gerel sobbed. “Let’s get her back,” Jyn said, her voice thick with anger.

When she arrived at the village, she was relieved to see Liya was tied to a post, fully dressed. There were bruises on her face, though. Jyn gripped her tonfas with white knuckles. There are always gaps in armour. Find them, and you can kill.

“Let the girl go.”

The mercenaries stood. “Who do you think you are, to order us around, bitch?”

“*It doesn’t matter who I am. But I know who you are.* You’re sick. Treating a little girl and a widow from this War as toys, as objects, as _meat_ ,” Jyn snarled.

The first man lunged, spear raised. Jyn blocked his strike with her right hand, dropping into a crouch to slam the left weapon into his instep and thigh. He gasped and sank. She leapt and brought both down with a great crack on the back of his neck. He fell down and lay still. The second charged. Jyn knocked aside the spear with a sweep of her left foot. He staggered. Her momentum carried her around to slam into the man’s head, downing him. Turning her weapons into a defensive stance, she broke the third man’s spear with a hard block from below. Jyn surged upwards, bringing the tonfa hard into his windpipe.

She stood amongst the broken bodies and stared coolly at the leader. The village women, and some of the men, cheered, watching. The man pulled two war hammers from his belt and readied himself in an earthbending stance.

Jyn flexed her hands and waited.

Cracking the earth, the man sent a rock towards her. Jyn shattered it. The rocks flew as she was thrown back by any she could not break. Bringing the hammers down, he sent a harsh ridge straight up beneath her feet. Jyn hit the ground with a thud.

  
_Never change, Stardust, never change, never change, never change –_

_What do you mean by that? She asks one day –_

_You are good and strong and brave, my Stardust –_

_Because I am your weapon –_

_How can you send me away?_

_You are your father’s daughter, they are beginning to suspect –_

_You **used** me –_

She loves her father. She loves her father. She loves –

  
Jyn bended a wave of fire that sent the soldier flying. She rose, burning, from the inferno. All the joy in Liya’s eyes had turned to fear. The women gasped. She swung the tonfas and bent a shot of fire that sent the man crashing into the earth. He cried out, “Who…who are you?”

She clipped her weapons to her belt. “I’m Jyn,” she said. “Daughter of traitors and freedom-fighters.”

“You’re just Fire Nation scum,” the man spat, and died. The villagers were whispering now, as she pulled her dagger from the man’s belt. As she approached Liya, Gerel stepped in front of her.

“Don’t come any closer,” she hissed.

Jyn knelt, and extended the dagger. “I want Liya to have this.”

“No!” the girl yelled, “I _hate_ you.”

  
Her father shakes her awake in the middle of the night. “Put on a dress,” he hisses, “The Fire Lord has summoned us.”

Blearily from sleep, Jyn says, “What?”

“Hurry!” he snaps. Bodhi is behind him. He thrusts one of her dress at her. Sixteen and already too covered in lean muscle to be a proper court lady, Jyn shrugs on the long silk gown as they both look away. “Jyn, you must promise me you will say nothing. Promise me!”

“I promise.”

“I love you, my Stardust,” he kisses her forehead, “Everything I do, I do it to protect you.”

Jyn loves her father.

And then the Inquisitors, the awful assassins that hunt those still loyal to the Alliance of Four Nations, take them away, and the yellow gaze burns on her.

(Love, she understands now, can be a weapon. Had the Fire Lord known then, how she would use it to keep herself alive, to make the Avatar bleed, to keep her father on his righteous path to Fire Nation glory?

As her body screams with crackling fire, she thinks, she would have preferred a lightning bolt to the heart.)

  
Jyn rode towards the sunset. Nobody spoke to her.

She understood now what the taste in her mouth was.

It was shame.


	19. Book Two: Empire VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes on Vader here: given the technological limitations of a largely pre-industrial medieval world, Vader is not a quadriplegic with four prosthetic limbs BUT he will still have some grievous injuries because it isn't Star Wars without extreme bodily harm. He also doesn't have the vocoder to sound like James Earl Jones, regrettably, and in my head I've just been imagining Hayden Christensen with like completely damaged vocal chords as I type, but if you want to imagine the Vader voice, more power to you. 
> 
> It's all kind of wild though given that Hayden was just announced to be returning to the role. I am literally the Kronk meme going "oh yeah, it's all coming together." Comments are always appreciated!

The old research facility at Kanzi had been abandoned for some months. It had been mentioned, off-handedly, in the last message Galen ever sent, before the North Pole. It had been important. He prayed to any Spirit listening that he was not too late.

Bodhi clambered over the high metal fence and dropped to the ground. A good location for an experimental research facility, high in the foothills. He could have done without the labyrinth of passageways inside, though.

Finally, Bodhi reached the area that must have been the main lab. It was an hour of fruitless searching before he uncovered the secret compartment hidden in the metal of the wall. Grabbing a thin blade, Bodhi slid it into the near-invisible seam. Grunting, he put all his weight on it.

The panel snapped open. Inside were two scrolls. The first was in a code Bodhi recognized. The second was impenetrable to him. It looked like Air Nomad script, something he had never been able to learn. It was also significantly longer than the first. Sitting down on the dusty metal floor, Bodhi set to work on the one he knew.

When he finished, he sat back with a kind of numb horror.

‘Jyn & Bodhi. I do not believe I have much time left. You must bring this scroll to Jedha. An old friend is there. It is imperative that you do this. The glory of the Fire Nation awaits at the end of summer.”

The end of the War. It could be only that.

Jedha, Jedha, Jedha. It was like a great lodestone, dragging them all into its path.

He shoved the second scroll into his suit. Replacing the panel, Bodhi left the facility.

It was real now. His failure at the North had been a test.

Bodhi built a fire, and tossed the first scroll in. He would make it right.

Jedha, Jedha, Jedha.

  
Cassian pulled open the map as they made camp for the night. They were three days out from Savareen and were crossing through alternating desert and mountainous regions that separated them from Jedha. He didn’t bother looking at the names of where they were passing, only calculating how much further their long march would take. A quick question to Leia on the timing of her last menstrual cycle gave him a sense of how much time had passed since they set foot in the Earth Kingdom. Spring was upon them in earnest now. Though the vegetation around them was scraggly, Artoo and Chewie were beginning to shed, leaving coarse white and brown fur under their feet.

“Yeah, yeah, roll around in your own filth,” Han was muttering, as he brushed out a lolling Chewie. Even Threepio was moulting, his golden feathers fresher and shinier.

He heard a soft rustle of fabric and saw that Enfys had come up behind him, having already laid out the bed rolls. She had removed her helmet, which she usually wore throughout the day, in case of ambush. He could see Luke and Leia making dinner together, Luke marveling at the dried shrimp Enfys had brought.

“What villages are we going to be stopping at?” she asked, leaning down to look.

“None, most likely,” Cassian said.

Her brow furrowed. “You don’t normally stop in places?”

“Only to purchase food, fuel, or information. We’re on a tight schedule.”

“I thought the Avatar would be looking to help out wherever they’re needed.”

There was nothing accusatory in her voice, but he still bristled. She was young, Cassian reminded himself. _I have to keep moving too._ There was blood on his hands. “We came to Savareen to find you. Helping out the Cloudriders was Luke and Leia’s idea.”

“Not yours then?” she said. Now there was accusation. Bile coated his tongue.

“We keep moving,” he said flatly, rolling up the map, “Maybe you should start training the Avatar with more than those breathing and listening to the wind exercises.”

Enfys frowned, her grip on her staff tightening. It looked old, he thought. An heirloom of her people who had split off to find their own way in the wild regions of the Earth Kingdom. Noble warriors, she had called them. Honor was cheap in the Water Tribe. You helped each other survive the winter, no matter what it took.

But he had killed Tivik and countless others in cold blood, would have abandoned the prison slaves on Lothal. Somehow he did not think that was what Breha Organa meant when she spoke of ending the horror.

  
The Moon was high when he heard the rumble. “Something’s coming!”

Enfys opened her glider and took to the sky. After a few moments, she dropped back down. “Some armoured Fire Nation tank! It’s coming straight for us!”

From the darkness, two figures wearing old Mandalorian armor emerged. “Get the camp together!” Cassian snapped at Han and the twins as he and Enfys dropped into fighting stances. Cassian bent water from his water skin, sending out six water-whips at once. The figure leapt over it, their hand smashing onto Cassian’s shoulder. Cassian bit back a curse, shrugging off the figure. A paralyzing sensation swept over his body. His bending water fell to the ground as he slumped over. His arm would barely move.

And he couldn’t _bend_.

There was a screech as Kay dove between Cassian and the opponent. The Mandalorian backed off quickly. Cassian pulled himself onto Kay’s back with his working hand. “Thanks, Kay,” he gritted out. Bending a vortex, Enfys knocked the Mandalorians aside. Leia jumped up behind Cassian. Luke and Han settled on Artoo’s broad back as Enfys took flight. Their opponents did not pursue them, dark eyes watching them disappear.

They rode for hours through the mountains. Cassian could stay awake through the night, but the unease was draining his energy fast. At least movement was returning to his arm. Experimentally, he dragged his fingers through the air, pulling fat globs straight from it. The others looked haggard. At last, they found a small valley. Enfys glided down as they began to make camp. “What was that?” Leia demanded.

“ _Qi_ -blockers,” Cassian said. At their perplexed expressions, he elaborated, “Earth Kingdom word from Cato Nemodia. It’s the body’s energy flow. Life and bending are part of it. That’s how the Mandalorians were able to wage war – they made a whole martial art to stop benders. During the Separatist Wars, the Mandalorians were used as battle fodder for it. Looks like the Fire Nation still kept a few.”

The words settled ominously over the group.

“We should warn the villages along the route,” Enfys said, directly to Cassian, not bothering to remove her helmet. “We don’t want them to be hurt.”

“They’re after us,” Cassian said. “They won’t be going near the villages.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because someone is always hunting the Avatar.”

“Then they might interrogate those people!”

He lay down and looked at her coolly. A lifetime of spying kept his voice even and free of – he clamped the thought down. “And if we warn them, there is no guarantee it will stay silent. The safety of the Avatar is paramount to ending the War.”

Enfys scowled and went to set down her bedroll a distance away from the group.

“Cassian, I think you’re being a little too hard on her,” Luke said carefully, “I know you’re tired…”

“Go to sleep, Luke,” Cassian grunted, rolling over. Luke and Leia exchanged a glance but said nothing. Han went over to check on Enfys before settling down himself, shaking his head.

He had barely fallen into an uneasy stupor when the rumbling began again. In the distance, he could see smoke. Frantically, the group threw themselves back onto the animals and set off. Artoo howled unhappily, as did Chewie. Leia was forced to grab Threepio out of the air to prevent him from working himself into an anxious mess.

“What is that thing?” Leia said, holding Threepio’s beak closed, “And how does it keep finding us?”

Cassian could feel Kay’s exhaustion beneath his thighs. The mongoose lizard was flagging. He made a hissing noise that could be easily translated as, _I’m not enjoying this and think this is a bad idea._ Finally, Artoo sank into a heap when they reached a flat rock in the mountains. Groaning, the group collapsed onto the dirt, not even bothering to set up camp.

“Who do you think it is?” Luke groaned.

“It could be Erso,” Leia mumbled into her pack, “We haven’t seen her since the North Pole. Though where’d she get the money for all that?”

Enfys tilted her head in confusion. Leia supplied, “Angry Fire Nation lady that’s tracked us all over the world.”

Abruptly, Threepio scrambled out of Leia’s hold and began to cry, “It’s coming! It’s coming! Doomed! Doomed!”

The bird was right. The armoured tank was belching smoke as it roared up the mountain side, black and spiky. Leaping to her feet, Enfys bent a great thrust of air with smooth, circular movement. The tank screeched backwards, landing on its side.

There was a moment of respite. Then a hatch opened, and a figure stepped out.

He was tall, taller than an average man, and covered in heavy black armour belted to black tunic and trousers. His hands were gloved. His cape billowed out behind him. A great black helmet covered his head, with a face plate. Even the eye slits were covered by a strange red film. It was hard to believe it was a man at all that stood before them. Cassian would know the man anywhere, from the whispered stories spoken in back alleys and secret meetings, from those who had survived. The Dark Lord of Fire himself.

“Vader,” Cassian breathed. “Pack up! We need to go now!”

Vader made a motion. As the Mandalorian _qi_ -blockers leapt into the air, Enfys took flight. They met in the middle. Two strikes, and she went down. Coating his arms with water, Cassian formed two water sleeves. He caught her paralyzed body with his right, sweeping aside the _qi_ -blockers with his left. He handed her over to Luke, already astride Artoo. Luke unclipped Enfys' helmet, tying it to his belt, to check her over. Enfys’ face was a rictus of pain. Han grabbed the reins over from Luke, so he could hold onto her. They took off into the night. Behind them, Vader dropped a hand, signalling his Mandalorians to fall back.

He was hunting them until they dropped dead from exhaustion, Cassian realised. It was so ingeniously simple, brutal in its effectiveness.

They rode the animals harder than ever, Cassian telling a winded Kay that he would navigate and to simply mindlessly run. As the hours passed, Enfys was able to move again. He heard Artoo sigh with relief as she glided overhead, reducing his load. Daylight was breaking as they began to slow. The animals collapsed. Artoo gave a loud snore as he fell to the ground. Cassian stroked Kay soothingly. His head felt like lead. His vision was blurry. _Keep moving. Keep moving until you stop._ “Why couldn’t the Cloudriders have given us a sky bison?” he muttered. "We could make real ground -"

Enfys froze, turning to look at him with burning eyes. “Do you have any idea how important those bison are to us? They're _sacred_ , they aren't pack animals!”

“All right, all right!” Luke snapped, “Everyone is exhausted…”

“No, I want to hear what Cassian has to say,” Enfys said, brushing past him. “Are you blaming the Cloudriders for this?”

From his tired mouth came, “I’m only saying it would have been much easier.”

“Do you know what I sacrificed to come here? What the Cloudriders gave up?” She cried, “We wouldn’t even be like this if you all maintained your animals better!”

“Stop yelling at Cassian!” Leia snapped, dark shadows beneath her eyes.

“How is this Artoo’s fault?” Luke’s voice has risen in pitch now. Dark circles were visible under his eyes too.

Enfys stabbed a finger towards Chewie and Artoo. “They’re shedding everywhere! That’s how Vader is tracking us!”

“Well, maybe if you started training us earlier, we wouldn’t be in this mess because Leia and I could fly!”

Enfys seized her pack. “I’m leaving,” she said brittlely. “You can keep your selfish quest and find a more suitable airbender.”

“Nest, wait,” Han said, but she brushed past him, tossing out her glider and flying off.

The pin seemed to drop then. Cassian felt like he’d shot himself in the foot with an arrow. Enfys had gotten under his skin. He was twenty-six, the oldest here, the one keeping them moving. Luke and Leia collapsed on the ground. “How could I have yelled like that?” Luke groaned, kicking a rock. In her anger, Enfys had left behind her helmet, which Luke cradled carefully. “Now she’s gone.”

“We should have been more patient,” Leia said, pulling her knees to her chest, “We aren’t being fair to her at all.”

“Yeah, you all were assholes,” Han said, feeding Chewie some meat.

“Thanks, Han.”

“My pleasure, Princess.”

Cassian said nothing, but bile ate at his throat and insides. The disgust and horror on her face shook him. The thought of how Jyn had mirrored him. He was hungry, too. “We need to find her,” he said, “Make it right.”

“What _we_ need to do,” Han said sharply, “Is figure out how to get rid of Vader.”

Leia ran her fingers through Artoo’s fur, pulling out white strands. They were carried away by the wind. “Cassian, wasn’t there a river by an abandoned city near here?”

  
Vader frowned thoughtfully beneath his mask as he listened to the report. Normally, in the face of such failure, he would make his displeasure felt. But despite himself, he could never be rid of the old Mandalorian commandos who had served so loyally during the Separatist Wars. That they had been indoctrinated into this…

Vader waved a hand to dismiss the commando’s words and his own thoughts. The chase was on. His children and their companions were flagging. They were making for a river – an excellent strategy given their reliance on waterbending. His reports said they travelled with a master waterbender. Obi Wan had always had such praise for them, but they had failed and died, all the same, beneath the fire’s heat.

“I will handle this _myself_ , Commander,” he said.

Enfys dropped to the ground with a soft thud. Weariness thundered across her body. In her fury, she'd forgotten her helmet. She missed the feeling of the soft moisture of her breath against the burnished metal, even if she had whined about it to her mother as a child. Her shoulders and hands ached from gripping her glider for hours. She flexed her gloved hands, rolling herself out.

Shelter. Rest. Then a way back to Savareen. What would her mother say as she stepped onto the sandy shore once more? That she had lost their heirloom, on top of that? She thought of the coldness in Andor’s eyes. These were the people who were fighting against the Fire Nation. What would Andor understand of the thin desert girl who had raised her chin to the sun? What would he know of the defiance of three hundred years, of how, wet and shaking she had crawled from the fire and grasped her mother’s staff to lead them to freedom?

Balance. Visions. She had no time for cosmic games. There were lives at stake.

She thought of the agreements she had made with Crimson Dawn to keep a section of the supply raids. Slavers, people said, leaving only misery and desolation. So what if Qi’ra had tight reins as the new leader? So what if she claimed she was freeing the slaves, keeping the Hutt Cartel and the Pykes in line?

The world was a hungry place.

What stung most was the betrayal from Skywalker. She had thought him different. She believed in his eyes was the reincarnation of the woman her people had followed to a new rebirth, that only justice could bring peace. He had felt familiar, trustworthy. She had seen hope in Luke and Leia.

_You must be your own net, Enfys. You must learn to scramble back up when you fall._

She shouldered her pack and focused on looking for a flat bit of ground to sleep on.

There. A cave. Staff extended, she inched towards it.

Someone yelled. A brown skinned man with loose black hair, held back by a pair of goggles, was sitting there, chewing on some dried meat. “I’m sorry,” Enfys said, lowering her staff an inch. “I didn’t mean to frighten.”

He exhaled, offering a tentative smile. She decided that he seemed alright. And he was Earth Kingdom, which was always good. “That’s alright. I’m just a bit jumpy.”

Enfys eyed the cave floor. “Do you mind,” she said carefully, “if we share.”

“Oh. Oh, sure, yes!” He blabbered, “You look tired.”

Grateful, she sank down onto the floor and began to nibble on her rations. She wasn’t about to sleep across from some strange man - every woman in the Earth Kingdom knew the dangers, and everyone knew a girl who had been hurt - but at least she could regain some energy to find somewhere solitary.

“I’m Bodhi Rook. If you don’t mind me saying,” the man said, “You look young.”

“Enfys Nest. I’m not so young,” she flushed, “I’m eighteen. I...left my companions.”

The man smiled sadly. “So did I. Was it um, a mutual thing?”

“We disagreed about the War,” Enfys said shortly. “I gave up...something important to go with them. I can’t... I can’t live with that decision,” she said brokenly, as the revelation swept over like a wave.

“You’re traveling with the Avatar?”

Enfys spun away into a circular, defensive stance. He raised his hands and stammered, “Hang on, hang on I haven’t been tracking you all! I’ve met the Avatar! Well, one of them. Sort of. He hit me over the head with a vase and escaped the ship, honest mistake. And I’ve seen his sister, um... Layla?”

“Leia,” Enfys corrected slowly, unwinding herself carefully. “Yes... I was.”

The man’s eyes shone. “Why did you leave them, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I can’t abandon my people,” Enfys whispered, “I can’t abandon all the villages we keep passing. They don’t… they’re chasing something larger than I ever have.”

The man, Bodhi, took a sip from a cracked cup of tea. He extended a cup to her, which she accepted. “Well, did you, you know, ever tell them you were struggling this way? Did you talk?”

When she said nothing, he continued, “You’re an airbender?” She nodded. “Airbenders avoid conflict, don’t you?” She scowled, and he added hastily, “It’s not anything to be ashamed of. Every Nation, every village in every Nation is different.” He smiled distantly. “I’m from Jedha, but I spent a long time in the Fire Nation. I was there when the North fell, and I’ve been to the four Air Cities. I think it’s important to know about all the other Four Nations – and airbending is defensive, isn’t it? Even your offensive moves aren’t usually lethal. And you’re dealing with Earthbenders.”

Enfys pulled her knees to her chest, feeling all her eighteen years. “Well, my tribe is stubborn too,” she said, “We’re warriors, not sages and politicians. I would never turn my back on home and my family.”

His large eyes, too big for his face, were sad. “I knew someone like that too… A friend.” He turned those sad, determined eyes on her. “Sometimes doing the right thing means sacrifice. It means being brave enough to do the next right thing, for each other, even if you’ll never see what it brings.”

“Hope,” Enfys whispered. “Is that…why you left your friend?”

“She’s…lost,” Bodhi said, “She had a difficult childhood…where she was made to do things. I think she doesn’t knows who she is or what she wants, that maybe she could find her old life again, far away from the War…and that’s not possible. That’s selfish. She went away, and I didn’t follow.” He swirled his tea and looked down at it. “I always orbited her, for years and years…”

“She’s very blessed,” Enfys said softly, “To be loved by you so.”

“Sometimes love isn’t enough,” Bodhi told her. “I have to… make it right. With or without her.”

Enfys stood, and shouldered her pack. “Thank you.”

“Oh, I have plenty of tea…” Enfys shook her head. “Thank you for telling me what I have to do, now.”

She stepped to the mouth of the cave. With a tap of the staff, her glider opened. The clouds overhead beckoned: _free yourself, fly away and never look back._ But that was its own lie. She was a part of this world. “If you ever see your friend again,” she said, “Maybe you should tell her that she already has a family.”

Enfys soared, red hair floating out behind her. Bodhi shouldered his pack, and made towards the river.

  
The old city of Tython was high in the mountains. The ancient stone ziggurats were crumbling in the abandoned ruin, older than five thousand years. The group stumbled through. Wind whistled, and the city seemed to gasp and breathe. Painted on some of the buildings were the two wings of her necklace, of the Jedi tile. “Jedi, huh,” Han said, as Luke brushed the faded paint.

“Ben, Master Kanan, that guy in the prison, Luminara,” Luke said slowly, “Maybe Father too.”

You lionize him too much, Leia thought but didn’t say. Anakin Skywalker was dead. Whether they were like their father before them or not, they had to keep moving. She was Padme’s child, Breha’s, Bail’s, and action, not memory, were all they had.

Vader would be upon them soon.

They walked down the long central artery until they reached the mountain stream. It must have come from snowmelt here, and Leia shivered. There was no time to dig out their winter materials. Leaping into the freezing water, they began to scrub the furred animals frantically. Han grumbled at Chewie for crowding close to him – he really was a clingy warm-hearted thing – and Leia flushed slightly watching Han’s broad callused hands gently untangle the fur.

There was a War going on. She had a thousand questions, fears, lessons. And Han…she clamped the thought down. He was softening, but what of it?

_Focus_. She grabbed a protesting Threepio and dunked him in the river, watching his loose golden feathers float away. "Oh, shush you, you're not dying."

"Lot in life to suffer," Threepio muttered. Leia rolled her eyes. There was a loud bray of an ostrich horse.

Cassian said, “ _You_?”

Erso. Erso, dressed in Earth Kingdom clothes. She looked thin and wan. Her green eyes burned, but she looked more confused than angry. Still, Leia didn’t hesitate. With a water-whip, she sent Erso tumbling out of the saddle. The horse bolted.

“Leia, wait!” Luke said. Bending two water sleeves, Leia stalked towards the woman. She snarled, “What are you doing here?”

“Getting water from the river,” the Fire Nation woman said, jumping back to her feet. “I’m not here to fight, Avatar.”

“She’s a wanted Fire Nation traitor,” Cassian said, “You’re on the run, aren’t you?”

The woman locked eyes with Cassian and nodded.

Whatever interrogation Leia planned never happened. The horrible rumbling of the tank sounded. It was too late to run with their pets so exhausted. They turned, and waited to make their stand. The horrible black tank, covered in spikes, halted in the centre of Tython. A deep rasping breath. The monster stepped onto the cold dusty ground from the tank, and faced them. He was worse in person. Almost 2 meters tall, covered in that weathered black armour, no sign of flesh or blood. Leia could see now the thin red-glassy film over the eye-pieces of his face plate, the dark slits cut where a mouth and nose should have been, to allow him to breathe. What awful rotted creature lay beneath?

Erso scrambled backwards, dropping into a firebending stance. The most powerful firebender of his generation, perhaps of any generation. Perhaps one of the most powerful benders, ever. He didn’t even glance at Erso.

Cassian struck. He bended two massive streams that barrelled past Vader, slicing the treads straight off the tank. Then he sent eight tentacles of water at the monster. Vader gave a single, almost lazy punch.

Fire, so bright it made her eyes water, burst forth and decimated the attack. There was no water left. The fire had extinguished it all. Vader was still and silent, his raspy breaths the only sound. Leia began to get the disturbing feeling that Vader was staring fixedly at her and Luke.

“What now?” Leia bit out.

“Now?” Lord Vader’s voice was almost painful to hear, low and harsh. “Now, this ends. You are tired and have nowhere to go. Surrender, Skywalker.”

“Luke, Cassian!” They began the duel. He was so powerful, Leia thought, as she and Luke alternated water and sand, Cassian and Erso tag-teaming. The armour slowed him, made him less nimble and dexterous than Erso, but he compensated with a raw power that made hers look pathetic. They ran through the streets, desperate.

With one hard step, Vader sent a wave of flame that smashed the twins into a home.

“Enough of this!” Vader said, “It ends here, Luke, Leia. You will come with me.”

“Never!” Luke yelled. The house was aflame. Vader's flame was so powerful. The stones wavered in the heat. She felt as though her skin would melt.

A tendril of water seized Vader’s wrist, yanking it backwards. Cassian's teeth were gritted, fighting against Vader's massive strength. Leia had never loved Cassian Andor more. Jumping to their feet, the twins bent stone upwards with two flat stomps, sending Vader flying. Vader skidded to a halt in a crouch, turned, and pursued Cassian. Han leapt from the shadows, swinging the kitchen knife. Vader sent a fiery blast. Erso dived between them, slicing it into shreds.

They had him pinned. Vader thrust his hands out, creating a blaze.

A huge tornado of air engulfed the inferno, squeezing the life out. A red-haired figure dropped from the sky, staff raised. As Enfys landed, Cassian said, more than a little sheepishly, “I’m sorry. How I acted was inexcusable.”

“We’re sorry as well,” Luke and Leia said. Enfys only nodded. It would have to do. More sheepishly, Luke held out her helmet. With a faint smile, Enfys took it, her other hand never moving from Vader's direction.

Vader moved through the alleyway, seemingly searching for wider ground as the five circled him loosely. His hands began to glow with deadly fire - A teapot, of all things, hit his head. “What?”

“Bodhi!”

The Earth Kingdom man darted to Erso’s side. He raised his hands, which Leia supposed she appreciated. Lord Vader seemed to consider. He slid into a neutral stance, and raised his hands. “I know when I am beaten.”

Leia’s eyes narrowed. She could not read that mask.

Vader’s hand clenched.

A jet of pure white flame hit Bodhi square in the chest. Erso screamed. Four elements and one kitchen knife struck Vader, as he ignited a massive sphere of fire.

The alleyway exploded.

  
Jyn crouched over Bodhi’s body. He was so still, his eyes closed. She could hear his soft, ragged breathing. A horrific burn covered his chest. Vader had fled. Hands trembling, she touched his cheek. “Bodhi,” she said, “Bodhi, wake up.”

She had done this. No matter how close or how far, Galen Erso was already lost to her, had been lost to her long before the struggle had even begun. To love and yearn for him, to become _Stardust_ , on the black sand of Lah’mu, was as distant as the wandering stars eternally reaching for the hot sun.

“Bodhi,” she said brokenly.

“Jyn, I can help.”

The Water Tribe man was behind her. Those silver coin eyes were soft. Dream-like, she thought, _Cassian. His name is Cassian._

“I have water from the Spirit Oasis, it has special healing properties -”

“Leave,” she whispered. Fire bloomed from her fingers. “Leave!”

They ran.

She heaved Bodhi’s body onto her back. The river. The air was thick with smoke. Jyn placed him in the river’s cold embrace, frantically splashing water onto his chest.

She should not have made them go.

  
Fuming, Vader stepped into the colonial establishment of the Earth Kingdom village. He had rid himself of the incompetent Captain of the pursuit tank (“Apology accepted, Captain Needa”), and proceeded on foot, trailed by those still with worth. The spineless soldiers and bureaucrats leapt to action as he snarled for a messenger hawk.

He had seen them. Luke, fair-haired and blue eyed as he had once been; Leia, dark-haired in a vision of Padmé. Her wrath had been all his, while Luke’s righteous defiance was pure Padmé. His children. He had needed to see to believe. Nineteen years they had walked upon this Earth in foreign lands, when they could have been at his side, Prince and Princess of the Fire Nation.

_It seems, that in your anger, you killed her…_

If he had run away, when Padmé had begged, would they have looked at him with love instead of mistrust? (Had Padmé, misguided by Obi Wan’s lies, not looked at him with fear, as his hands seized her neck) He was a scarred, ugly thing now.

It made no difference. They were his. They would not be taken from him again.

They were strong with their friends. They needed to be separated. And there was one he knew, however much he misliked his cool efficiency, who could get the job done. His burnt fingers had trouble holding the brush. Dictating to a terrified underling, Vader said, “Address it to Fett.”

“A-and the other, my Lord?”

“To the new Grand Admiral…”


	20. Book Two: Empire VII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Asterisked lines explaining lightning generation and the philosophies of the Four Nations are from the episode "Bitter Work". Additionally, I have no idea how heavy Diego Luna actually is in real life, but Google tells me he is eighty kilograms. The idea that Cassian is bad at dancing comes from one of those interviews Diego gave where he said he was bad at dancing and struggled with Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, which I think would be even more hilarious in this universe where Cassian can do all sorts of ridiculous martial arts trickery but just...cannot dance. Bonus that he hid during Leia's quinceañera and that's how she knows he's a bad dancer.

They had made camp in the mountains, a breezy place that Enfys said was as good as any to begin their airbending training. Luke was awoken bright and early by the airbending master, who was fully dressed aside from her helmet and cape. She smiled good-naturedly down at him. Her hair glowed in the light. Artoo, curled around him, yipped unhappily. “You too, Artooie. Get dressed, eat a light breakfast, and then come with me,” she said, before going to wake Leia.

Blearily, Luke sat up. He munched on some nuts and fruit, while Leia braided her hair. For some reason, most of the sleeping bags and their excess clothes were gone. Finished, they followed her down into a cluster of trees. The clothes were suspended from the branches like long curtains.

Settling down with a small puff of air, Enfys said, “Airbending is the most spiritual of the four bending arts. It’s the element of freedom, like the wind. Some masters advocate for complete non-attachment in order to achieve true freedom. Even those who reject these teachings believe in a limit to material possessions.”

Luke and Leia exchanged an uneasy glance. Neither of them felt particularly free.

Springing to her feet easily, Enfys continued, with an easy smile, “Airbenders are flexible and dexterous. In the Cities, we would start with the Gates Practice, the first tier of airbending – circle walking. But we never had that so we just make do.”

“How many tiers are there?” Leia said.

“Thirty-six to become a master. Or thirty-five, and on top of that, you invent a new technique. I became a master at twelve, which is very rare.”

The twins looked at each other again. Luke nodded firmly. He could do this.

Enfys made circular, scooping movements with her limbs and bent a great orb of air around the clothes. They began to rustle and sway. Luke saw there was a thin path between them. A maze.

She picked a leaf and sent it towards the maze. “The objective is to follow how the leaf follows the wind, never brushing the clothes.”

Enfys began to move through the sheets in a half crouch. “It’s all spiral movements. When you meet resistance” – a cloth brushed towards her, and she easily shifted. “You change direction instantly. You must be light on your feet!”

She perched herself on a tree branch with a swirl of her hands. “Of course, in the cities, you’d get smashed by a wooden gate. Anyways, Leia will go first.”

His twin squared her jaw and fell into the same stance Enfys used. “You got this,” Luke said warmly.

It was an unmitigated disaster.

It was probably for the best that they were using cloth. Every time she brushed against a cloth, Enfys would call, “Strike!”

When Leia stumbled from the maze, cursing and swearing with forty strikes, Enfys arched a bemused eyebrow at Luke. Gritting his teeth, Luke stepped as lightly as he could into the maze. A cloth fluttered towards him and he stumbled, trying to keep his balance. Another cloth brushed him. By the tenth strike, Luke was no longer soft-footed, fighting his way rapidly through.

Cassian, who had come up the hill to watch, raised his eyebrows. “Would you go join Han in hunting?” Luke muttered sourly, joining his still irritated sister.

“You need to be more patient,” Enfys said, floating down and resting a gentle hand on Luke’s shoulder, “You lose your focus and keep trying to confront the gates, I mean, sheets, head on. Airbenders always look for another way. Air doesn’t try to wear anything down, it looks for any crack or crevice it can find.”

Luke sighed.

“Enfys, I don’t think my body is designed to bend this way!” Leia grit out, as she tried her best to slide into a split.

The Cloudrider was perched on her brother’s back, forcing him further down. Luke’s face was a fantastic puce colour. Leia couldn’t decide if he was embarrassed or in pain. Probably both. “An airbender must be flexible and move with ease.”

As though sensing resistance, Enfys continued, “Cassian, sit on Leia’s back.”

Leia bit out a very vulgar statement as Cassian’s eighty kilograms reluctantly settled down.

“So, I’m going to lunge at you,” Enfys said, lifting her hands. “All I want you to do is move around me. I’ll demonstrate. Come at me.”

Luke, who was only a few centimetres taller than Enfys, easily lifted his hands. She could more than take care of herself. Luke lunged. Enfys slid easily around his body, and tapped him on the side of the head. “An airbender understands to look for the path of least resistance to succeed.”

Wordlessly, she lunged. Unthinkingly, Luke blocked her strike, keeping his stance steady. He had never run from a fight in Tatooine, in their long journey North. Enfys met his gaze and shook her head. Gritting his teeth, they tried again. And again.

And then Luke slid past Enfys, and tapped her gently on the cheek. “Airbending slice,” he said with a grin.

She straightened and gave a pleased nod of approval.

“Enfys, those are mine,” Leia said, as the airbender settled down for lunch, holding Leia’s carefully hoarded seal jerky. The twins were meditating, as Enfys had instructed. Leia hoped that wherever Obi Wan was, if he had not yet found the great Wheel of Reincarnation, he was pleased by their improvement.

The airbender smiled placidly and bit into it. Leia could respect Enfys’ iron willpower, her incredible strength and ceaseless fight. But _her_ seal jerky… Maybe this was a test. But what was it? To fight back? To let go of her ego and her fear?

Sucking in an irritated breath, Leia settled herself back down, pressing her knuckles together. Listen to the wind…listen to the wind…that seal jerky smells so good, just a nibble…listen to the wind…

Soon the smell melted from her conscious thought. Behind her, Enfys smiled. Then she spat the jerky discreetly onto the ground.

Luke hesitantly allowed Enfys to take his hands. “It’s just dancing, Skywalker,” she said, “You need to stop feeling compelled to take charge. Let go of your ego and your frustration. Let me lead.”

He could hear Leia grumbling from where an annoyed Cassian was holding her hands to do a Water Tribe dance. Cassian, for all his skills, was not a good dancer. He could hear Leia groaning in pain and telling Cassian which foot to use.

Then Enfys began a whirling, stomping, athletic Air Nomad dance. Luke stumbled along, feeling increasingly humiliated. Unintentionally, he pulled Enfys’ hands, halting their progress. “It’s just us,” Enfys reminded him, “You have nothing to prove, to me.”

How could there be nothing to prove? He had barely six months to master three more elements, he had to be strong, like his father (and mother, he could hear Leia pointedly correcting; Luke internally winced at that slip and silently apologized to his mother’s spirit).

There was so much to live up to.

Luke allowed himself to focus only on Enfys’ brown eyes. He could count every freckle on her skin, bright as stars. The world shrank.

When they finished, panting and sweaty and facing one another, Enfys gave a pleased smile. “I think it’s time to try the gates again.”

Bodhi had slept for three days now. She had dragged them to a rotting house in the mountain. Every few hours, Jyn would feed him porridge with a long wooden spoon, and place a damp cloth to his lips. On the morning of the fourth day, he woke with a fever. Was this better? Jyn wondered, as she wiped his forehead down and swaddled him to sweat it out.

In his fever, he babbled. “Where am I going, Jyn?” he asked.

She handed him a cup of cool water. “Jedha,” she said as gently as possible. Where else was there?

“I can’t go back there…” he slurred, staring at her, dazed, “I’ve been gone too long now… Not Fire Nation…but not Earth Kingdom… just wanted to feed them, Jyn… Did you…understand? Jedha’s gone… Jedha’s already gone…”

Jyn tipped his head back and made him drink. The question cut too deeply. Bodhi’s friendship with her had always been undemanding, easy, the warmth of a presence at her back and a hand on her shoulder.

Self-sacrificing.

She thought of the lean, smooth line of Galen’s back, weighed it against the gravity of _Jedha is already gone –_

“Do you hate me, Bodhi?” She wanted to slap herself, a hot flush filling her body.

It was worse when he looked at her with something like pity. “Do you hate _us_ , Jyn Erso?” he slurred, delirious from fever.

Jyn remembered the fear on the Water Tribe faces. The hunger in the Earth Kingdom girl’s eyes. _I hate you_ , Liya had told her. What did Bodhi see when he looked at her? Something within her, Jyn knew, would not survive that transformation.

Bodhi closed his eyes and slept. Jyn looked down at the food in her lap, and tossed it away, choking on shame.

They failed.

“We had perfect form and stance, and we still can’t make it through an exercise for _children_!” Leia said. Luke raked his hands through his sandy hair in frustration.

“Airbending takes time…”

“We don’t have time!” the twins yelled together.

Enfys frowned. “We’re going to take a break.” Softer, she said, “I know you’re the Avatar. But even the Avatar struggles. You aren’t failing the world just because you’re taking your time.”

Cassian intervened then. “We still need to complete your final waterbending lesson. We can do that in the stream.”

Reluctantly, the twins followed.

When Bodhi had awoken again, he did not seem to remember what he had said. Jyn had been twitchy, thrusting the food and drink at him wordlessly. She watched him sit up and begin to eat. “Jyn…” he said after a moment, “This tea is awful.”

She managed a small, hard smile. Bodhi ran his fingers over the strips of cloth around his chest. “You’re lucky it was fire and not lightning,” she said tightly. She handed him a cup of water. He drank slowly. They had not seen sign of Vader. But the Right Hand of the Fire Lord was harsh and merciless. “Bodhi…I… I’m sorry.”

“I know. You abandoned me.” Jyn tried not to flinch. In Bodhi’s eyes were, _I will not forgive you, **yet**_. He cleared his throat and continued, “If Vader comes after us…”

“I’d need lightning.” She remembered Master J’orus’ training. * _Lightning is a pure expression of firebending, without aggression. It is not fueled by rage or emotion the way other firebending is. Some call it the cold-blooded fire._ *

The old man had looked upon her with a disdain. This scrap of a girl who thought herself a firebender. “You do not have the inner peace to achieve the separation of positive and negative energy, to create lightning,” he said dismissively. “You are filled with the shame of your father’s and mother’s disgrace. Had it not been for Director Krennic, you would only be fit to light the cookfires!”

He had been right. Any attempt to bend lightning had exploded in her face.

Just like so much in her life. Some of that there was no one to blame, but herself.

Jyn looked at her callused palms. Master J’orus had been wrong on one thing. It had not been shame that had fuelled her then, but rage. She knew shame’s taste. She did not think she could ever wash it from her mouth again. “I don’t think I can.”

Bodhi was quiet. Then he said, “Maybe the mistake of this War…of the years of strife before it…was that we never looked to one another.”

Jyn furrowed her brow. When had Bodhi grown wise? Or had he always been wise, and she had been too occupied with her own selfishness to listen? She was a terrible friend. “I guess I’m thinking of the fact that I spent almost half my life in the Earth Kingdom and the other half in Fire,” he said, softer, “When I go home…”

“You would be accepted,” she said firmly.

How could they not? He is one of them, one of their dark-eyed, brown-skinned own, and he is _Bodhi_. She thought of those fearful faces in the stark white of the Pole.

“Well, anyways,” he said vaguely, “It’s something I have to accept in myself. One day. But my point is that maybe it’s time to look outside firebending.”

“I’m not the Avatar,” Jyn said stupidly. Bodhi looked at her. “Then who are you?”

Who was she, now? When she had been made to choose, there, at North Pole, the edge of the world, who was she?

Leia noticed Cassian rolling out his arm as they went through the stretching stances to begin waterbending. "I thought the _qi_ block wore off?"

Cassian sighed. "It did, but it's not easy to forget. Smart strategy, though. Taking something down from the inside."

Leia winced, recalling how their group had fractured. It had been easy picking for Vader. That monster's fervent desire to capture them was terrifying - and he could make good on it. One day, she and Luke would have to face him to get to the Fire Lord. And they only had an element and a half down. Leia scowled, accidentally shattering the ice sphere she and Luke were forming. Flushing, she returned to her focus, feeling Luke moving at the edge of her mind, weaving where she lunged, blocking where she hit, striking when she drew back.

As they bent water with perfect control, Cassian said, “I’ve been thinking about this block.”

“And what does the great Cassian Andor think?” Leia muttered, knowing she was being childish. She couldn’t help it. Her lack of progress irritated her.

“Fire and water are opposites,” he said, an odd look crossing his face momentarily, “So earth’s opposite must be air. Your earth nature is stubborn and confrontational - your solution is always to dig your heels in and not listen."

"Like with our firebending," Leia murmured. She would not forget the smell of Cassian's burnt flesh.

"Even water,” he looked meaningfully at Leia, “Can be relentless. Bending is more than physical motions. It's spiritual - you need to embrace an air mindset.”

“We’re never going to get it,” Luke groaned.

There was a cracking sound. Cassian flung a reed at them. The twins bent a thin slice of water, cutting the reed perfectly in two. “Yet, you’ve mastered water. On Mandalore, you thought that impossible. But you worked hard. What will you achieve in two more months?”

"Well, that's only because we had the best teacher," Leia said. Her old friend's eyes softened. He had been there from the start. "The very best."

By the fifth day, Bodhi was back on his feet. He winced when he moved. But there was colour in his face. His fever had broken in the night. Jyn unwrapped the bandages and examined the ugly red burn. “I’m going to have that forever. Well, fun bar story, I guess,” Bodhi said, trying to get her to smile.

“Scars can be helpful,” she said, thinking of the constellation of pale waves across her body.

As they ate, Jyn said, “So, the Four Nations. The idea would be to incorporate their bending philosophies, into my own?” He nodded. “So, tell me more.”

Bodhi cocked his head. “Well, I expect you already know about the Fire Nation?”

In the dust, Jyn traced flames. “*Fire is the element of power,” she recited, “The people of the Fire Nation have desire and will, and the energy and drive to achieve what we want.* Also, we have a strong predisposition for egomania.”

He snorted. Reaching down, he traced a stylized boulder. “*Earth is the element of substance. The people of the Earth Kingdom are diverse and strong. We are persistent and enduring.* Probably why the Fire Lord hates us so much.”

Jyn winced. She knew something of the Air Nomads. Saw, who had dumped her, too… Drawing three spirals, “*Air is the element of freedom.* The Air Nomads are free-spirited and adventurous, and advocate for peace and humility. They’re also supposed to be funny, but I’m not sure if Saw was informed.”

Bodhi laughed. He traced waves, enclosed by a circle. “*Water is the element of change. The people of the Water Tribe are capable of adapting to many things. They’ve a deep sense of community and love, that holds them together through anything*.”

Had that been what Cassian had understood?

Jyn left the house once Bodhi was done eating. The only bender she had ever fought more than once was Cassian. She closed her eyes and reflected. His fluid and deadly movements. The way he had turned her power against her.

Jyn shook out her arms and legs, trying to imitate the loose, open stance, and began to try.

The twins were meditating with Enfys when Cassian approached. “Han and Chewie aren’t back yet,” he said, “It’s almost sundown. There are wild animals about. We need to search for him.”

The quartet split up.

As Luke and Leia were clambering over a mountain of rocks, they heard frantic yelling. “Run faster Chewie!”

A gorilla goat, nine feet tall, was chasing after the duo. The twins leapt down and settled into fighting stances. No water, Luke thought, not much sand. These were bad odds, and gorilla goats were notoriously aggressive if untamed. “Any ideas?” he yelled to Leia, as they clapped and hooted to get the creature’s attention.

“We can’t fight it!”

A bolt of clarity, bright and luminous, hit him. “We can’t fight it _head on_. I heard about these, back in Tatooine! The more you attack, the angrier they get! But they like playing!”

“Han’s going to get eaten and you want us to _play_ with it?”

“We have to,” Luke said, “Like Enfys said, we have to let go of fear.”

Smoothening her brow, Leia nodded. The beast charged. Leaping aside, Leia backflipped onto a rock. Luke slid under the creatures’ arms and circled out behind him. Confused, the beast howled and charged Luke down.

He jumped – was that airbending? Somehow the leap felt greater than he had ever expected. Luke soared over the beast’s head and landed on a tree branch. The beast whined and swiped at Leia. She swung around him with a quick circular movement. The momentum – or wind? – carried her smoothly ten feet away.

The gorilla goat made a mournful noise and turned back towards Han. The twins looked at one another. He knew her thoughts and she his. _Enfys. Airbending. I liked a move a Cloudrider did on the convoy, do you know it? Of course._

“One,” Leia said, as they turned sideways, bringing their palms together.

“Two.” A cross step as the hands moved in circular waves.

And there, in their fingers – a spiral of air.

“Three!” They said together. They swung the air spheres outwards. Hit! The gorilla goat screeched. It arced through the air and slammed into the mountains behind.

“We did it!” Luke cried, hugging his laughing twin. “Chewie, we can airbend – gah!”

The bear had seized them in a fierce hug, warbling happily at being rescued. “Not so free now…” Leia said in a strangled voice. She patted the bear gently.

“Oh yeah, put my life on the line for the mumbo-jumbo,” Han grumbled, but he allowed Cassian, who had run over with the commotion, to pull him to his feet.

A small figure leapt down from the trees. “You were there the whole time?”

Anger, often so close to the surface, simmered. Leia’s hand intertwined with his, and Luke understood. Enfys would never have let it get out of hand. “We would like to try the air gates once more,” he said calmly. There was time. Their soul might have been ten-thousand lifetimes old, but they were young, and they were new, and they would keep trying.

Enfys smiled, bright as the sun, and led them towards the clearing.

It was storming. Jyn glared up at the sky. Lightning flashed. She had failed. She could not bend lightning, and she could not create a new technique. She was as much a failure as she had been as a child. The dark clouds spiraled overhead, the black of her father’s Fire Nation uniform, of Saw’s armour, the Fire Lord’s robe. “Well?” she yelled. “What are you waiting for?”

_Take me away from here_ , she had begged her father. 

Jyn sobbed. Warm hands reached down and dragged her towards the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've also posted a little HanLeia bonus chapter with some found family content. The new chapter on Friday will finally start the Jedha arc where our two groups finally collide!


	21. Interlude: Bounty Hunters

So a bounty hunter found them.

All in all, Bossk wasn’t the biggest of threats. Sure, he had a wicked-looking long bow, fought bare-handed like a rabid mongoose-lizard (full offense to Kay, that awful, awful animal who was definitely going to eat one of them in their sleep), and sharpened his teeth into points. But four benders against him was hardly fair.

A stray arrow from Bossk slipped through the twins’ sand shield. Leia hissed in pain as it cut through her upper arm. Enfys swung her staff viciously, sending Bossk slamming into the mountain side with a gust of wind.

Han watched Cassian bend water from his water skin, placing his glowing hands against Leia’s exposed skin. The skin knitted itself back together. The blouse was torn, and he watched Leia sew it close later at dinner. Chewie warbled as he walked away from the camp for a moment.

“Well what do you think I should do?” Han snapped. But the bear had no answers. Han didn’t expect him to. The arrow injury had left no scars.

But the worst scars were the ones with no marks, weren’t they?

So a bounty hunter found them.

All in all, Ai-Gee wasn’t the biggest of threats. Sure, he was whip-thin and nearly two metres tall (humans were _not_ supposed to bend the way that man did), armed with far too many knives and arrows, and fought like a rabid dog. But four benders against him was hardly fair.

“The Fire Nation’ll take your bounty, dead or alive,” Ai-Gee said flatly, red eyes glittering as his long fingers closed around Enfys’ throat. Luke yelled, bending an ice dagger out of his water skin. It hit Ai-Gee between the eyes. The bounty hunter made a gurgling noise. Enfys dropped to the ground like a stone, gasping.

Han watched Cassian bend water from his water skin, placing his glowing hands against Enfys’ bruised throat. Slowly, the marks faded. Luke sat her on Artoo the rest of the journey, checking up on her every hour. The polar bear dog nuzzled her gently, trotting along despite the added weight. She gave Han a wan smile when he handed her something to eat.

That night, he counted the bag of gold coins the Northern Water Tribe had given him. Not enough for what Jabba wanted. But enough so he could make a deal. “I have to think about Enfys,” he said at Chewie’s reproachful look, “She’s just a kid.”

A kid who could airbend a typhoon if she wanted to. But young, all the same, who deserved, after fighting her whole life, safety. Cassian, who, stick-in-the-mud or no, deserved to actually sleep through the night. Luke, a kid too, a kid who was going to save the world. Who had never asked for any of this.

And Leia –

_I like these people_ , Chewie told him, _I think they’re good ones._

At the fire, Luke told a bad joke, making Leia snort, Cassian sigh, and Enfys snicker in pity. Luke and Enfys were lying against a dozing Artoo, who blinked open one blue eye to give Han a suspicious look. Kay ate a wild rabbit with a bit too much gusto, while Threepio chattered away about something inane. All these people blighted by War and suffering. It was so fucking wholesome and dysfunctional it made him sick. “I like ‘em too,” he whispered.

So a bounty hunter found them.

All in all, Dengar wasn’t the biggest of threats. Sure, he was an overconfident jackass with too many explosives, a surprisingly sturdy amount of armour, and prepared to beat them to death with his staff. But four benders against him was hardly fair.

The explosive went off too close to Luke and Cassian’s faces. Both staggered backwards, skin burning. Snarling, Leia bent sand into swirling tentacles, slashing across Dengar’s face and body. Once they’d fled, Leia pulled Cassian’s water skin off him, trying to get him to bend the water. At last, teeth clenched, Cassian was able to heal his face, before he could set to work to Luke. Han felt a huge rush of relief as Luke’s face relaxed, pain ebbing, as Enfys checked over for residual injuries. “Still with us, kid?”

Luke groaned from the ground, throwing up an arm as though to say ‘don’t mind me’.

“You need to teach me or Luke to heal,” Leia snapped, “You can’t be taking all of it onto yourself.”

“I don’t even know how I do it,” Cassian retorted. Cassian looked haggard. Bounty hunter after bounty hunter, as they neared Jedha.

They were getting close to a river. He and Chewie could take the Falcon and set course Westwards. Arc around the continent to reach Wohbani on the Earth Kingdom’s Southern coast. Find passage inwards to Mos Eisley, and then to Jabba’s Palace. His fingers skimmed over the map.

Luke had said to him once, as they sailed down from Hoth to the Earth Kingdom, “I’ve always wanted to sail a real ship, not the sand-sailors in Tatooine.”

“One day, kid. But if there’s a new scratch, Chewie’ll toss you into the sea himself.”

He watched Leia fussing over her brother and friend. Sometimes, in his darkest, most immature moments, he thought that Cassian would’ve been better for Leia. They’d grown up together. Cassian was good at taking care of others. Maybe too much so. He was reliable, responsible, and powerful. Never mind that neither of them had any interest in each other.

But most importantly, Cassian had sworn to remain, no matter what. Cassian could keep his promises.

  
It’s always Moonlight.

He’d been heading over to the river to get his hands washed from getting dinner ready when he spied the tiny figure standing by the river bank. Instantly his dirty hands came up over his eyes, “Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to barge in!”

“Relax,” Leia laughed, “I’m already done bathing.”

Han dropped his hands. So he’d guessed right it was her. Enfys had a good five inches on Leia, only three inches shorter than Luke, the next shortest (not that Han was comparing). Leia stood knee-deep in the river, dressed in her under-wrappings. Her shirt was carelessly unbuttoned. While he had seen her undo her braids before, it always startled him how much hair she had, long, pin-straight, and dark (soft, he imagined). Her fingertips drifted through the water, creating ripples.

This small woman, who had all the power in the world.

On those long nights on the Falcon, even when her waterbending was still weak, it was always Leia’s face he’d come back to. Sure, she’d been raised in the Water Tribes her whole life. But you peeled it all back – it was so obvious she was an Earth Avatar. She would screw up her forehead, jaw tightening, asking, no, _demanding_ the element move under her control. Knock me down, she seemed to say, I dare you.

That raw, unflinching grit.

That unexpected gentleness when the water bubbled beneath her careful, curving gestures, answering back, _yes, you were meant for this._

Leia wasn’t someone who did anything by half. He could never ask her to, selfish bastard as he was.

“Whatcha doin’, Princess?” he asked, sticking his hands in the water to get them clean.

She rolled her eyes. “Airbending.”

He’d seen the twins practicing with Enfys earlier today. _Air is the element of freedom,_ Enfys had said. _It’s not like earth, which bends to your will._

The red-haired woman extended her hand into the wind. _The wind comes, bringing with it what it has found from long ago and far away. And it will ask you to let something go._

_And do you?_ Leia had said. Enfys’ face clouded for a minute.

_You try_ , she had whispered.

Leia’s forehead relaxed, curling and rotating her wrists fluidly. From her hands burst little dancing eddies, rippling the Moonlit water.

  
The last bounty hunter ended up just being a scared and bitter young woman, holding a bow and arrow in her trembling dark brown hands. Brand, she’d said her name was, though Han doubted that. Luke had pulled out the old Skywalker Avatar charm, coupled with Enfys immediately wanting to connect with one of her own people. Before you knew it, Brand was readily agreeing to join the Rebellion, taking Enfys’ hands and talking excitedly about the Southern Air City.

It was the perfect distracted moment for him and Chewie to slip away. He’d be leaving the Falcon, but it had to be done. Han didn’t want to have to explain himself.

Not to mention, Cassian was likely to water-whip him straight into the Spirit World.

They scuttled through the forest when a stream of water blasted over his head. It struck the tree in front of him, freezing it solid. Slowly, he and Chewie turned.

Leia stood behind him, her chest heaving from running. Her hands clenched and flexed. For a split second, Han was almost certain she was going to throw a punch. Then the water she was bending slid back into her water-skin. “Coward,” she spat, “ _Coward_.”

“And so what if I am?” Han snapped back. Chewie looked back and forth between them, then raised his paws as though to say _you did this to yourself, buddy_. “I’m gonna pay Jabba off. Don’t try to stop me.”

She strode towards him. The earth beneath her feet cracked, her emotions sending her bending awry. “You’re scared.”

“Course I’m scared. They’re bounty hunters.”

“Never put your life on the line?” Leia sneered.

“Because it’s not just my life, on line.”

Abruptly the mask, the Southern Tribe’s future chief, the Avatar, slipped. Her eyes widened. They stared at each other. He tried to memorize her face. Etched it into his mind to carry with him. Leia grasped his hands, almost desperately. “Then don’t go. You’re a part of our lives, now, Han. What would we be, without you?”

“Alive,” he whispered.

Leia was so silent, looking at him like he’d slapped her.

In an even voice, as though she were trying to make light of the whole thing, she began, “The Avatar reincarnates, so it wouldn’t…”

Han ripped his hands away. “No! Don’t ever fucking joke about being dead, Leia, _don’t._ ”

“Well you can’t stop that!” she cried, “This is a War, Han! Do you know how many funerals I have stood through? How many aunts and uncles I’ve sung into the Spirit World? Don’t – don’t you _dare_ …”

All the fight fled his body. Leia was shaking. Turning on her heel, she strode away from him. Han watched her go. Above, the Moon paints the trees in silvery light, more painful than the heat of the sun.

  
In the morning, Han sat by the campfire, stirring together what remained of their rice and some dried meat into porridge, sprinkled with some herbs Chewie had scrounged up. The others, blissfully unaware, accepted the meal, sitting and eating contently. Cassian, always bleary-eyed in the morning – waterbenders and their weird Moon obsession – raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

When Leia was shaken awake by Luke, she groaned, “If I see Han, I’m gonna kill him.”

“Really? His breakfast isn’t that bad.”

Leia’s head snapped around. Her eyes found his. Trying not to twitch, Han extended a bowl towards her. Leia stood, walking purposefully towards him. There was a pause.

Then her fingers brushed his as she took the bowl. She sat down between him and Cassian and began to dig in. Finally, “It’s nice.”

Han looked at Luke and Enfys laughing about something, Cassian’s mouth twitching in a half-smile as he absently went over the maps, Artoo chasing a hawk-eagle, Kay being a jackass to Threepio, Chewie lolling in the sun, and Leia. Her fierce, intelligent eyes on him, her thigh pressing against his, warm and sturdy.

(He would regret this, he knew that.)

“Yeah,” Han said, “It is.”


	22. Book Two: Empire VIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 1 of the Jedha Arc, which we've been building to for ages! Some dialogue taken from the Rogue One interrogation scene, where Cassian asks Jyn about Saw Gerrera. 
> 
> If you've been frothing at the mouth for Jyn and Bodhi to finally make a truce with Cassian's group, look no further!

“What in the Spirits are you doing here?” Han hissed.

Crouched on the rocky outcrop were a shocked Jyn and Bodhi. Bodhi’s chest was still bandaged, but he was very much alive. Jyn was pale and thin, but healthier than she had been in the North Pole. There was something different in her eyes. Not peace, or happiness, but perhaps a kind of resignation.

“Get down!” Cassian snapped. They flattened themselves against the rock as a convoy of soldiers passed below. Further down was Jedha, the Holy City, hewn from the yellow desert rock, ringed by a great ridged wall. Thousands of Fire Nation soldiers spilled like ants, to-and-fro. What was left of Jedha, really. They had been scouting the outskirts, waiting for Cassian’s contact to arrive. Once the convoy was well away, Cassian sat up. “Why are you here?” he said, directing this to Bodhi.

She was looking at him with naked curiosity. “We – I – found a scroll,” Bodhi said, “It’s from Galen Erso, the -”

“A collaborator in weapons development,” Cassian finished, glancing over at Jyn. Her face was very blank. Yet, it was as though an invisible seam had ruptured in her somewhere at the name.

“The head, actually,” Bodhi said. “It’s heavily coded. But it’s…it’s meant to go to Saw Gerrera. About something that the Fire Nation will use to end the War. We used to run messages to him, before…before…”

Cassian cut him off before he could speak the word that was blossoming over Jyn’s face like the sun. “When was the last time you saw him? Would he remember you?”

“It’s been a long time.” Jyn spoke at last, her voice brittle.

“But he’ll remember you. Wouldn’t he? He might agree to meet you, if you came as a friend.”

“Cassian, you can’t seriously believe them!” Leia said, folding her arms. Enfys looked between the two groups silently. She had never fought Jyn. To her she was only another person. As though her arrival had not split Cassian’s life cleanly in two.

“Her father is working on the Death Star – we came all this way for information. We share the same goal now.”

“Information that might be fake!” In answer, Bodhi produced the scroll. Cassian examined it. “It’s Fire Nation,” he said at last, “But I can’t decode it.”

“I know him,” Enfys spoke up now. She smiled at Bodhi, who gave a little wave. “He’s not a liar.”

“It doesn’t prove anything,” Leia said sharply. More neutrally, she said, “We’ll vote on it. Those who think we should go with them to Saw -”

Cassian and Luke raised their hands. After a moment, Enfys did as well. Scowling, Leia didn’t finish her sentence. She instead beckoned to him. Cassian followed her. He could feel Jyn’s eyes on his back. “Stop pitying her,” Leia said in a low voice.

Thrown, Cassian merely blinked. “I’ve seen the way you look at her,” Leia continued, “Just because she’s pitiful doesn’t mean she’s a good person, Cassian.”

“She has more to lose than us,” he said flatly. Pity – no, it wasn’t pity that moved him. “We give an ultimatum. She double crosses us, we kill her. If she keeps to her word, we let her go free.”

“Deal.” Jyn was standing directly behind him.

Introductions were made. Some contact of Cassian’s, a fair-skinned Earth Kingdom woman with straight black hair and almond eyes, had arrived. Jyn looked skeptically over at this Doctor Aphra, dressed in a ragged coat. Her silvery iguana parrot was thoroughly bullying the Avatar’s own. Her mount, a nasty-looking canyon crawler, watched them with too many red eyes. Aphra, noticing Jyn’s gaze, blew a kiss. Fine, Aphra was quite pretty. They were talking about leaving the Air Nomad rebel, Enfys, behind to look after the animals as she was too notorious. Jyn, knowing that her input was neither welcomed nor appreciated, sat down amidst Team Avatar’s supplies. She picked up the beaten leather pack and rifled through it.

No paintings of a betrothed like a good Rebel fighting for the girl back home. Not even one of family. The only trinkets she found were some blue bone beaded necklace, a carving, and two small leather wrapped pouches. The rest was sparse and impersonal. Even his clothing was remarkably simple for Water Tribe. There was only a simple beading and embroidery sewn into his poncho and the leather coat he wore now, though it did look like it was made with love. Then, there was the familiar dagger. It fit easily into her hand. Jyn spun it, remembering its weight and feel. And now the Avatar was right beside her, pale-faced teenagers growing into the musculature and strength of adult benders.

The mongoose lizard – Kay – made a keening noise. Cassian looked over at her. His eyes fell on the knife. “I know how to use it,” she said defensively.

“That’s what I’m afraid of. Give it to me.”

Everyone was watching now. “We’re going to Jedha. And I can’t firebend in there without everyone knowing.” More meaningfully, she added, “Trust goes both ways.”

That lean, handsome face considered her. His eyes dropped from the knife to her face. Whatever he found, he returned to his friend. Aphra clapped her hands. “Alrightie then! You’re owing me big-time for this one, Andor. Lucky for you, I was already planning on scavenging some old junk in the Holy Temple.”

“The Holy Temple is _not_ full of junk for you to loot!” Bodhi said, his voice taking on an angry pitch Jyn had not heard before. Emboldened, she rested her hands on Bodhi’s shoulders and glared at Aphra. Beneath her hands, she felt Bodhi straighten.

“Yeah, yeah, Spirits and all that mumbo-jumbo.” She grinned at the annoyed faces. “We’ll be going through the Old City beneath. I’ll be staying there to loot, err, research. The rest of you wanna mess with the Fire Nation, that’s your business.”

Her parrot, Triple, crowed, “Immolation, extermination, execution, oh, how exciting, Bee-Tee!”

The canyon crawler chittered happily. “I do not like that bird,” Leia muttered, at the same time Cassian cut in, “After we get out of the Temple, we find Bodhi’s family, if that’s alright?” Bodhi shifted on his feet. At last, he nodded. He hadn’t seen them in almost ten years, Jyn thought with a lump in her throat. “We shelter there for the night. In the morning we start looking for Saw Gerrera.”

“Good luck with what’s in there,” Aphra said, as they began to walk towards a concealed tunnel. Nest waved after them. Leia frowned. “What’s in there?”

Aphra gave a wolfish smile. “ _Spirits_.”

  
Luke felt Aphra was watching him. They had been tramping through cool tunnels of an ancient city for hours now. It looked like the people above had sealed off old streets and built higher and higher onto the mesa. Sometimes they could hear the echoing footsteps of people walking in basements. The squat buildings felt ominous in the torchlight. Alive. Doctor Aphra – Luke wasn’t so sure about that degree – would continually point out things when she wasn’t peeking at him, “Ooh, a siege weapon! Shame Bee-Tee can’t carry it. Ugh, this spear’s rotted. Where’s the _gold_?”

Finally, Luke said, “Do I know you?”

Aphra, who would had been loading some evil-looking daggers onto the canyon crawler, paused. “Nah, just thinking you don’t look much like him.”

“Like _who_?”

“There it is!” Aphra cried, ignoring him. They had reached a pair of huge doors carved with serpents. Red kyber eyes winked in the darkness. The doors, unlike everything else, were completely and utterly pristine. There was a wrongness about it. Cassian’s eyes fell on the suddenly sweating archaeologist. “Well, good luck, and all that, I gotta keep scavenging, if you’re going to kill me, Cassian, I think I’d like it through the neck, clean and fast -”

“Don’t ramble,” Cassian bit out, uncorking his water-skin. “ _What_ is in there?”

Aphra gave a nervous smile. “Look, those old Guardians…they built their Holy Temple on top of something way older. From back during the Hundred Years of Darkness. The Spirit that’s down here, Korriban… He’s got a library, he doesn’t like to share – _flash bomb_!”

There was an explosion of light. When Luke could see again, Aphra and her companions were gone. Cassian swore under his breath. “What’s the Hundred Years of Darkness?”

“That archaeologist is absolutely full of it,” Leia snapped. “There’s a story, a song about it. Don’t ask me to sing it!” Han deflated. “The way it goes – five thousand years ago, there was huge war when Spirits, for their own reasons, gave power and wisdom to cruel and greedy people. They built an Empire here, and enslaved thousands. The Earth Avatar then, Memit Nadill, he stopped them. It’s not real, it probably just came about from the wars before the Earth Kingdom semi-unified.”

“I don’t know,” Bodhi murmured, “There’s old Jedha legends about this place being sacred because there are Spirits beneath the sand. And Tarkin – he found out about the Moon and Ocean from secret libraries under the Temple.”

They all looked at the imposing doors. “We have to enter,” Luke said, “There’s no other way into the city.”

“Can Spirits be evil?” Jyn muttered.

“I don’t think they really _understand_ what evil is,” Bodhi whispered back.

Luke pushed the doors open. The library was cool and dark. Jyn ignited two dancing flames in her hands, sending them to hover above. Shelves stretched all the way into the ceiling. Scrolls, carvings, wooden and stone tablets, all were stored on their shelves. Writing that no human alive could read anymore. Some of the lettering was horrible, written in a terrified scrawl. In alcoves were rectangular stone slabs. Luke stared as they passed. It clicked. Tombs. Thousands of tombs. Glowing kyber crystals cast lit above these, shuddering and making them seem to move.

And then there was the slithering.

At first, Luke saw only one snake. Then two. Then there were hundreds, pouring down from the shelves. Panicked, the group clustered together. The snakes coiled, a great mass of bodies pulling together…

A great, pale green serpent rose up between the shelves. Its face was a smooth mask, with only two red eyes. It blinked and looked down. “Who has come to seek knowledge?” it hissed in a high, cold voice. Bodhi and Han made choked noises.

“Korriban?” Luke whispered.

The serpent cocked its head. “Korriban, Moraband, Sith, Priestess… I have had many names, Avatar, across time, for all those who seek my Spirit Library. You may call me XoXaan. Few humans are permitted. Only the wisest of the Holy Temple’s Guardians may enter. Most are not worthy of its knowledge. Tell me, are you worthy, Avatar? Killers?” Her red eyes fell on Jyn and Cassian. Both flinched.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Leia said, grasping Luke’s hand tightly, “We only want to get into Jedha.”

“Hmm, and why should you wish to go to Jedha?” The serpent slithered closer, until her pale face was inches from theirs. “Perhaps to start another petty Empire of your feeble human imaginations?”

“Hardly,” Leia said. Jyn edged herself a little behind Cassian. They stayed perfectly still as the smooth face brushed against theirs. It rasped like parchment against skin.

The red eyes blinked and withdrew. “Then I permit you to pass…consider it…a _gift_.”

As the serpent slithered into the darkness, Luke turned to the group. “Ben once said not to accept gifts from Spirits. They always come with a price.”

“Kid, we have to get out of here,” Han pointed out, “As long as we keep heading up, we’ll reach…something real.”

Leia pursed her lips. “Let’s just go. And hope that thing doesn’t come back.”

The group hurried until they reached the floor’s centre. Across from them was the rest of the floor, split by a huge pit. A central walkway connected the two sides. Luke leaned over the railings to look down into the pit. More and more floors, disappearing into the Earth. Looking upwards, Luke yelled, “There’s a staircase up there, leading to a door. We just need to get to the top floor!”

A little snake slithered past, and pointed its head to their right. “I think…it’s saying to go that way?” Leia said.

“It’s in league with the big one,” Jyn muttered, but she trailed along. Ahead was a wooden pulley system that connected the levels. Cassian paused. There was a glass case before the pulleys. Inside was a burnt piece of vellum. “The darkest day in Fire Nation history. There’s a date.”

“Just leave it there!” Han and Jyn said at the same time. Han added, “That thing _knows_ what we’re looking for!”

Cassian cautiously walked towards the pulley system and examined it. Luke and Leia caught up with him. There were inscriptions on the side of the wall, marking locations in the library. Bodhi read them aloud, recognizing the script. “Fire Nation material is a few floors up,” Bodhi said, “Well, it would be on the way…”

The group looked at each other. In the silence of the library, they heard the slithering. “We could just take a look,” Cassian said. Cassian always knew what he was doing. Luke and Leia looked at each other, making a gesture to say ‘he’s the leader’.

They stepped onboard the pulley. With a kick to the lever, Cassian sent them trundling upwards. Luke said, though his voice shook, “We beat the Lord of Hunger. We can do this, too.”

When they reached the designated floor, Bodhi gasped. There was only ash. Even the bookshelves were gone. “They just burnt it all. They knew it was here.”

A snake slithered out from under an ash mound. It passed the group and alighted on the platform, twisting itself around the lever. Waiting. Cassian and Luke broke the stalemate. Ignoring the shouts of Han and Leia, they nodded at the snake. Luke saw Cassian discreetly bend water from his water-skin, though. The snake shifted. The pulley jumped three more floors up. The snake slithered out and through the shelves, until it reached a large circular door. They followed it. Overhead were large metal semi-circles with a crudely built sun and moon attached, as well as some of the known wandering stars, planets, that orbited their sun.

“It’s a planetarium,” Jyn said, sounding breathless, “There’s one on Coruscant.”

In the centre of the room was a raised dais. Cassian walked towards it. There were three dials – day, month, year, as well as lever to advance time forward. A mechanism to control how the planetary positions. He and Luke exchanged a glance. Luke nodded. They entered the vellum’s date. With a groan, the sun and moon began to move. Stars swirled overhead. With a snap, the room went dark.

“You broke it! The snake’s gonna kill us!” Han hissed.

“No,” Leia said, stepping forward and squinting, “It’s a solar eclipse… the darkest day in Fire Nation history…”

“Fire is controlled by the sun. They lost their firebending, on the day the Moon covered the Sun,” Cassian finished, glancing sideways at a curiously blank Jyn. Bodhi looked thunderstruck. “We have to see if it will happen again before the comet comes.”

“Hurry, I can hear slithering!” Han said. Luke put his back into it. The heavens continued to move. No eclipse. No eclipse. No eclipse –

“There! The first day of the eighth month this year!”

“So, this is where you are.” Light flooded into the planetarium. XoXaan coiled herself into the room, her tail twitching. “You have come to continue the pointless battles of your kind. Good, evil, Fire, Earth, Water, Air… never understanding how to find _true_ balance. As I suspected.”

“They burnt your library!” Luke yelled.

“And I ate all that I could find,” the serpent said placidly, “Now, six mortal lives. I gave you freedom and knowledge, and so I will eat well tonight. I thank you, Avatar.”

Luke and Leia summoned a gust of wind, throwing the serpent backwards. “Run!”

They bolted. Bookshelves crashed around them as they ran through the library. The entire thing was shaking. “What is she doing?” Han yelled, as they reached the pulley. There was a crash behind them.

Luke looked upwards. The staircase was shrinking. “The library is sinking!”

XoXaan burst out of the shelvings, hissing, “Thieves of knowledge will stay with me in the Spirit World! A bargain must be paid!”

She lunged. Cassian kicked the lever. They rocketed upwards, teeth just missing them. He and Leia bent the air beneath them, forcing the platform up faster and faster. The staircase, originally starting just above the stop for the final floor, was getting further away. They were reaching the end of the line. “Cassian, cut the rope!”

From the darkness of the falling library leapt the fanged mouth of the great Spirit XoXaan. _“Thieves!”_

With one sharp slice, the platform sprang upwards on the air’s momentum. Leia began to count as they reached the apex – “Jump!”

They sailed through the air. The falling wooden platform clipped XoXaan. She hissed, disappearing back into the gloom with a whisper, “In another life…”

Cassian, Luke, Leia, and Jyn landed on the stairs, or managed to grab hold of it. Bending two watersleeves, Cassian caught Han and Bodhi. Scrambling up, Luke grabbed Cassian’s waist and helped him to pull the two struggling men up. They hurried up the stairs, threw the door open and tumbled inside. They were on a rough stone floor of some sub-basement. It was blessedly, thankfully, mortal. 

One piece of information down. Now, there was the Death Star. They could do that. Winning the War felt so close, Luke could almost taste it.

“This,” Jyn groaned from the floor, “Is not what I agreed to.” 

Enfys stretched from a bit of light flying. The animals seemed as bored as she was – Artoo and Chewie were chasing one another, while Threepio kept stammering, “let him win! Let him win!” Kay was on his back, supposedly napping. She could see him watching her. “So…you like deserts?” she said, lying down on her stomach.

Kay gave her a disdainful sniff and rolled over. As she stood to get a pack of food, she saw it. Hundreds of troops assembling around Jedha. Tanks and siege weapons. _They’re almost done stripping all the resources_ , Cassian had said as they marched towards Jedha.

The Fire Nation was coming to raze the city.

“Stay here!” she ordered. Snapping on her mask, she threw her glider open and jetted into the clouds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Jedha arc was originally only two chapters - Jedha + the aftermath, but the chapter for Jedha started ballooning, especially with multiple POVs, that I felt it was better to separate them into three chapters. Next chapter will be Jedha proper, with plenty of Cassian and Jyn moments, answering the key question, "are you weirdly friends if you keep saving her life and she keeps saving yours while the city is falling apart and her surrogate dad is trying to reconnect?"


	23. Book Two: Empire IX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strap in folks, this one got really, really long. Here we are in Jedha proper! I binge listened to [Stardust](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKkWMj8QQt8) from the Rogue One soundtrack while writing. 
> 
> Vader's confrontation with Palps at the end is from Darth Vader (2015) #6. Bodhi's mother and sisters are all OCs (I just like giving characters sisters! Though apparently the new Cassian show confirms Cassian has at least one sister??).

Jedha sat at the confluence of three different regions of the Earth Kingdom. It was large, full of domed buildings and squat homes, denser than anything most of the group had ever seen. Behind them was the triangular shape of the Holy Temple. Statues and relics to some highly specific local Spirit were everywhere, a white buffalo. Cloth hung from every available surface, providing canopies. Fire blasts and desolation riddled buildings, empty gaps where kyber had once shone. They walked quickly through the packed streets.

There were the locals: fair to brown skinned people with thick black hair like Bodhi, tan skinned folk with round faces and ink-black hair in elaborate braids, and fairer skinned people with inky hair and almond eyes. The explosion of greens, browns, yellows, and whites was a riot. Interspersed were robed and masked pilgrims, pale-skinned Fire Nation officials, and the unmistakable armour of Fire Nation soldiers. Wanted posters were plastered over the city: Saw Gerrera, Enfys Nest, the Kestrel, the Avatar, her and Bodhi, deserters, and still, yet more people. The sun was setting and people were still cooking, a heady scent in the air. Voices, shouting, chanting, _passports and hands where I can see them_ , how had the Fire Nation not tamped down on this relentless energy?

It had been a long time since Jyn had been in a city – and she thought perhaps she understood the Fire Lord’s frustration. The city was _relentless_ , it was a gravity that shifted the ground under your feet, that drew in from all around it, for good or ill. There were too many here to control. It was perfect for Saw Gerrera’s Partisans.

Soon, Bodhi drew them towards a plain home in a market area. He rapped a quiet code on the back door. A brown-skinned older woman with greying hair opened the door. She gasped. Then she threw her arms around Bodhi. “Oh, my son,” she said, “My son.”

Bodhi sobbed into her dress. She pressed their foreheads together. They breathed as though they were each becoming part of one another. Bodhi kissed both her palms. Wet-eyed, she ushered them inside. Bodhi and his mother were speaking to each other in one of Jedha’s many languages. She heard her name. Then the older woman turned to them. “My name is Tana Rook,” she said, “Are you here, to save Jedha, Avatar?”

The twins looked at one another. “No, that is – I’m sorry, we -”

She saw Cassian’s haggrd face as he dropped a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “We have to meet with Saw, Madam. It’s critical to ending the War.”

They discussed heatedly as Tana pursed her lips. “I’ve never interacted with Saw. Everyone who is still left in Jedha is a rebel in their own way but I don’t -” She broke off, shaking her head. “But I know a girl who runs mercy missions for rebel cells. Hedala Fardi. I know where she works. Tomorrow I can show you.”

“Thank you,” Jyn said.

Tana eyed her and then clucked her tongue. “Aditi! Hema!” Two little girls ran down the stairs. Bodhi regarded them with distant affection. It occurred to Jyn that they had been born long after he had left. She knew he had two other brothers. Working in mines somewhere. A great wave of affection for Bodhi swept over her. Jyn reached forward and squeezed his hand. Tana was instructing them to prepare what space there was for guests and show it to them. “Then I’ll need help to prepare dinner.”

Cassian and Leia immediately stepped towards her. Han and Luke started after the little girls before remembering themselves, and sheepishly joined them. Tana arched an eyebrow. “You certainly aren’t from around here. Erso will help me.”

Uncomfortable, Jyn trailed after her to the indoor kitchen and the wooden cookfire. Tana’s dark eyes watched her as she handed Jyn a cutting knife and a series of vegetables. “What is it?” Jyn asked bluntly.

“I’m trying to see what inspires such loyalty in my son, from someone like you.”

Jyn recoiled. It had always seemed to her, in those five long years, that it had been just the two of them, against the world. _You abandoned me,_ Bodhi had said. It was more than the horse. Jyn said quickly, “What did you mean everyone is a rebel?”

Tana gave a hard smile. “The War is not just won by those on the frontlines, or the Avatar. It is won by the baker who hides the slaves in the store, the guardian who cooks extra for the starving family, the little children who warn of who is coming. And it is lost when those with power choose to do nothing. They will crush you, too.”

And then what, she had asked. _And **now** what?_ She wanted to ask, anyone, Saw, her father, Bodhi, Cassian…

Tana’s eyes said, _you know._

They ate flat bread with spinach and lentil. Jyn swallowed every bite even as she felt sick beneath Tana’s gaze. She was sharing a room, more closet, with the Avatar - Leia. The other woman unrolled her sleeping mat, while Jyn settled herself down on a worn rug. What would have become of her if she had been captured? The next Avatar would be born in Fire, but that was not enough to guarantee her loyalty to the Fire Lord alone. Jyn tried to imagine her growing old in a prison in the Fire Nation, instead of killed outright. “My brother said you saved his life from Tarkin. That’s why he decided to trust you.”

Her tone was neutral. Jyn gave a non-commital shrug. It had not been a selfless decision. As she placed her satchel down as a pillow, the other woman continued.

“Thank you.”

Jyn looked up. The Ava – Leia was looking at her, calculating. “Luke is a nice person,” she said. She flashed her teeth. The implication was clear. To her surprise, Leia continued, “Why did you run messages for Saw Gerrera?”

That paused her. Jyn debated. Then, “My father thought I would be above suspicion as a spy, since I was a child and a hostage.”

A thousand emotions flitted over Leia’s face. “I, _we_ , all were cheated out of our childhoods, too.”

(Jyn loves her father)

“Are you going to kill me, when this is over?” Jyn asked.

“Are you going to hand me over?”

Jyn’s eyes flicked over to where she could hear Bodhi talking outside. She shook her head. Leia’s gaze stripped through her. Then, “No.”

_“Why?”_

“I think you’re scared,” Leia told her. Leia’s eyes fell on the opposite door, where the men were staying. Jyn stilled. “I think it’s very easy to lie down and let things happen,” she said. “It’s much harder to live for something. And I know who I am, whether I want to be or not. I’m the Avatar. And I’m better than that. I have to be.”

She lay down, trustingly, and said no more. Jyn reached upwards, remembered the necklace was gone. She let her hand drop softly to her side.

  
He remembered the house. He remembered the embroidery on the rugs, the smell of incense, the yellow-stained tips of his mother’s hands. Bodhi ran his fingers gently over the hearth in the kitchen. He knew the smell of roti, his mother’s curses, the noise on the streets that would not die, the worn blankets he had rolled out for his – friends?

He let that thought linger a moment.

And yet, the two new little girls who are his sisters. He had been gone ten years. Beneath that skin of the familiar was something so foreign. The world had shifted beneath his feet. Or perhaps it was he who had changed, in the slip of a different accent on his vowels, in what he knew as polite.

“Bodhi,” Tana said from the doorway. “Help me with your sisters.”

He came and sat with her. Hema, he thought it was Hema, looked up at him with wide black eyes. She looks like me, he thought. His mother was already unwinding Aditi’s hair and combing it with oil. Hesitantly, Bodhi followed. The repetitive motions soothed him. Hema sat still and rigid in front of him.

They don’t know me, he thought. He was a ghost to them, as much as Galen to Jyn. _Death Star. The Day of Black Sun._ He loved them, but he could not stay.

  
In the morning, the group argued. She saw Cassian massage his temples as he placed a hand on the table, breaking down what they would do. “We’re here for the Death Star,” he said firmly, “We came _all this way_ , and we _need_ to know.”

Jyn sat and ate silently. She slipped Hema and Aditi a little of her dried fruit when she thought no one was looking, and glanced up to see Tana’s surprised expression. Cassian decided that they would split into two groups – one that would go to Hedala’s workplace, and the other to her hostel. Luke and Leia would stay together, and go with Han and Bodhi. Jyn would be going with Cassian and Tana.

As they walked through Jedha’s streets, she kept glancing around, keeping her scarf wrapped around her face. The city was packed with enough people of all colours and lands that they did not stand out. But the wanted posters, and constant stops by soldiers were making her uneasy. “So, what are you planning when you find Hedala Fardi?” she said.

“We give her your name, and hope that gets us a meeting with Saw.”

Jyn ground to a halt. “Hope?” she said.

Cassian turned back and looked at her. “Yeah. Rebellions are built on hope.”

She turned the statement over in her head as they hustled to a tea shop next to the ruined Temple. Hope had sustained her in the wasteland of the North, in the five years of fruitless wandering, in the thirteen years after her mother had died – it had sustained these people too, desperate, as they had crossed the world, once by sea, once by foot. What made them different?

_Never change, Stardust._

“Does the Avatar feel that way? To believe this will win the War?”

“It’s what I keep telling them,” Cassian said, and he sounded exhausted. “Wait here.”

He and Tana stepped through the curtain of the storefront. Jyn frowned, trying to avoid being trampled underfoot. Over and over, the call of mystic: “May the spirit of others be with you.”

It occurred to her, madly, that she could flee. Who would stop her? The crowd was easy to disappear in. She would flee, they had lost the ostrich horse, but –

And then what? What would happen?

Dream-like, she approached the street charlatan. Jyn had seen the Spirits at the North Pole. He was in fifties, with close cropped black hair. He wore a long belted dark green and yellow robe, with brown breeches and boots. His almond eyes were pale and sightless. As he smiled at a woman dropping a coin into his bowl, she thought, he has a warm face. “I’m Chirrut Îmwe,” he said when Jyn reached him.

In the shadows was a thick, well-built man in a dull brown shirt, and trousers. There was old leather armour on his chest and right shoulder, a scrap of cape on the other. Strapped across him, on bandoliers and belts, were explosives. He turned two spark rocks over and over in his hands as he watched her with suspicious eyes. The blind man might not guess she was Fire Nation, but his dangerous friend certainly did.

“What do you know about kyber crystals?” Îmwe continued, grinning.

“I…my father said they’re used by mystics and shamans,” she said slowly, assessing the man, “To attune closer to the Spirit World.”

“Jyn!”

It was Cassian. His face was tense, body rigid. She turned to go.

“The strongest stars have hearts of kyber,” Îmwe said behind her.

Jyn paused. “Jyn, come on!”

She fell to Cassian’s side. She thought of the necklace, lost beneath the ocean, her father’s weapon, the great altar to the Moon and seas, and she –

  
Hedala, a girl with tan skin and long black hair in many thick braids, did not have good news. “Saw is planning an assault on the city today,” she said, “They’re finishing with the last of the kyber. Their guard will be down.”

“Benders? Weapons? Is Saw leading the forces?” Cassian demanded.

“Benders are usually rounded up, but he has some Earth and Airbenders, the rest use bows and explosives,” Hedala said, “I don’t know if Saw is a bender… He is very old now. But when I dropped my shipment, the said they’re going to light the city up.”

“Where?”

“The Holy Temple. The Guardians of the Whills can’t protect it now,” Hedala whispered. She turned to Tana. “Auntie Tana, I’m leaving soon. Go home. Gather your children if you can.”

“I will, child, but where is Saw’s hideout?”

“The old Catacombs outside the city,” Hedala said. “Further West.”

“Find Jyn, my son, and your friends,” Tana said. “I am going to warn as many people as I can to stay away from here.”

It had all been useless. Everything. He had held them together with Vader on their tail, with bounty hunters after Han, with fractures and fears – He had to keep moving. He had to think of his friends. He called Jyn’s name. Pushed through the curtain and found what he was looking for.

As he herded her towards Hedala’s hostel, Jyn asked some questions about the street charlatans, which he answered mechanically. “You seem awfully tense all of a sudden,” Jyn said, breaking through his stupor. Her perceptiveness tripped him up momentarily, until she seized his arm. “ _Cassian_ … we need to turn back!”

There was a tank, inching slowly through the narrow streets. Soldiers marched around it. Cassian’s eyes trailed upwards. He could see figures moving on the rooftops. Three local men, armed with bows and arrows, stepped into the path of the tank. “Tell me you have a back-up plan,” Jyn said, as they shoved themselves into an alleyway.

The street exploded. Fire, earth, and air brawled across the streets. Arrows, spears, knives, and fists flew. They pressed themselves against opposite walls. He uncorked his water skin, cursing internally. There was only so much he could do. It was official – he hated fighting in deserts. Their best chance was to wait for an opportunity to run. “Looks like we found Saw’s rebels,” Jyn said. She seemed almost calm in the middle of the chaos. He wondered vaguely if she liked sparring as much as he did.

A little girl was wailing as people ran. Cassian saw something cross Jyn’s face.

“Jyn, no!”

She took off across the street, ducking wildly. Catching the child around the waist, they fell to the ground as an explosive detonated against a shop. Cassian reeled backwards as a wave of fire punched against the wall. What was she thinking? When he got back up, the girl was gone. Jyn stood blankly in the middle of the square. Those brilliant green eyes were distant and unfocused. She seemed on the cusp of some great revelation, for good or ill he did not know. “Get out of there!” he yelled as the tank fired.

He flung out a wave, slicing clean through the tank’s firing mechanism. Jyn ran and crouched beneath it. Above, running across the rooftops, was a rebel with a bundle of blasting jelly. He lit it and aimed for the tank. The tank where Jyn was hiding.

The moment lasted perhaps a second. This Partisan, who could still give them the information, who could make everything worth it, who could _end the War_ , and then it would be over. His eyes met Jyn’s. Jyn who had saved Luke’s life, Jyn who had reached forward, Jyn who was as afraid of herself as he was. Cassian bent the very last of his water into a spear. He breathed. And then he struck.

  
Cassian had killed one of Saw’s rebels to save her life.

Behind him, she saw soldier approaching. Jyn pulled Cassian’s dagger. It flew from her fingers, sinking straight into the soldier’s neck. Then he was grabbing her, pulling the bloodied dagger from the soldier, urging her to run through the streets. Why had he not simply let her die?

He had told her to run to Bodhi. He had trusted her against the pirates. Killer, XoXaan had called him. And maybe he was. Maybe he needed her, for Saw.

She wouldn’t think of it. She did not want to be Cassian’s weapon, too.

As they darted out of another alleyway, Jyn surged forward, tonfas ready. She found the gaps in the leather-and-metal. In moments, she had felled three soldiers. She knocked a spear from the grip of one and threw it at an incoming soldier. Her vicious, fluid dance never stopped. As she lashed downward at a whimpering soldier, she heard the cry of a mongoose lizard. Unthinkingly, she grabbed another fallen spear.

It hit the lizard in the chest. A second, more familiar lizard, wearing a harness, came up behind it and _looked_ at her. Oh, right, him. “Course I knew that wasn’t you,” Jyn lied.

Cassian was staring at her with an unfathomable expression. His eyes kept flicking between the carnage and her. Noticing Kay, his expression changed. “You are supposed to be waiting outside with Enfys,” he said crossly.

The lizard made a thoroughly unashamed noise. Cassian’s eyebrows rose. One of the soldiers groaned, sat up and grabbed a loose explosive. He ignited and tossed it. Kay promptly caught it in his mouth, still whining at Cassian. “Uh…you need to put that down -”

The lizard swung his head and threw it at a bunch of advancing soldiers. The explosion shook the street.

“I hate that stupid lizard of yours,” Jyn muttered, as Cassian instructed Kay. “I don't care if it's boring outside! Get the other animals to the Catacombs, we’re going to need to make a quick getaway.”

Mongoose lizard dispatched, they continued to run. “Where are we going?”

“We passed the hostel. So it has to be the house, it’s the only place they might have returned to, we have to get out of here, regroup, I need to figure out what we’ll do next,” Cassian said, just as they entered a large plaza crawling with Fire Nation soldiers. Cassian grabbed her elbow to pull her back. Too late.

“Passports and – _Erso_!”

Before the soldier could lunge, a familiar voice said, “Let them pass in peace.”

It was Îmwe. He unfurled himself from a stairwell, extending a long wooden cane. When he stepped across the hard, rocky ground it was with total confidence. He spoke again, “The Spirits are with me, and I am with the Spirits. I fear nothing. For all is as the Spirits will it.”

The soldiers seemed so stunned that they let him progress closer. They’re going to kill him, Jyn thought. They were going to kill this delusional blind monk who thought the Spirits cared one coin for the mortal world. Chirrut reached the centre of the plaza. He looked directly at her, and grinned. The soldiers charged.

Chirrut dropped into a low wide Horse Stance, and _heaved_. A shield of rock stopped the fire. With a quick strike, he sent it crashing into the soldiers. And now Jyn understood how Chirrut had seen her in a crowd.

He was the most powerful earthbender she had ever seen.

Chirrut was precise, deadly – and having the absolute time of his life. “Is that your foot?” he asked cheerily as dropped a boulder on one. Just as it seemed it was over, a new horde of soldiers raced in.

A lit sack of blasting jelly arched over Chirrut’s head. The explosion made the entire plaza shake. It was only with a quick sink into the earth that Chirrut was not thrown back. Jyn and Cassian both staggered. Chirrut turned with a peeved expression. “You could’ve killed me!”

“You’re welcome,” his surly friend said, giving him a quick once-over for injuries. He kicked a Fire Nation soldier absently as he did so. Jyn and Cassian hesitantly got back to their feet. The surly man pulled out another dynamite stick.

“They’re alright,” Chirrut said, settling himself back down on the lip of a fountain. Cassian began, “Is he…”.

“He’s no Spirit-touched. Only a dreamer, the fool,” the man said, affectionately.

“The Spirits did protect me.”

“ _I_ protected you.”

Wherever the argument was brewing was cut short. The Partisans sprang from the ravaged buildings, yelling angrily as they grabbed the quartet. She couldn’t let them die. So Jyn spoke the only truth that had ever mattered to anyone. _Galen Erso._

  
It had taken Enfys too long to find the Rook family. The people of Jedha were suspicious, living in a warzone. At last, she was directed to the humble home. Enfys pounded on the door. A brown-skinned woman opened it, gasping.

Bending to make her voice deeper, Enfys said, “I am a friend of Bodhi’s. I travel with the Avatar. You are his mother?”

“I am.”

“The Fire Nation has gathered a huge force to raze Jedha to the ground. You can fight or you can flee, but you have to decide now.”

The woman’s face hardened, and she barked into the darkness, “Aditi, Hema, we need to go, now! Pack like we planned!”

“You, rebel -” She turned. “Your friends are either still lost in the streets, or they are going to the Catacombs, west of Jedha. Please, warn anyone you come across.”

“Of course,” Enfys promised.

As she soared, she began to call, amplifying her voice, “The Fire Nation army is coming! The Fire Nation army is coming! Leave now!”

She streaked across the city, searching.

  
It was a nearly six-hour walk before they reached the Catacombs. The Partisans separated the woman, then forced the rest into a cell. Chirrut’s seismic sense instantly evaporated. With his cane, he began to tap the ground. Ah. Fully metal prison. He could hear struggling and cursing – the man who had been with the strange, luminous woman. Then the sound of a body hitting the ground, and a door slamming shut. As he sat himself down, Chirrut heard someone get back to their feet and walk away from him.

So, he was further from the cell door then. Tapping with his staff, he located Baze, who placed a warm hand over his. As always, he was at Chirrut’s side. A great rush of love filled him, and kissed Baze’s fingers. Settling himself, he began to pray.

“He’s praying for the door to open,” Baze said to the man. Chirrut, who had actually been asking for something a little grander in the spirit magic, responded, “It bothers him because he knows it’s possible.”

Baze snorted. “Baze Malbus was once the most devoted Guardian of us all. Now he is just my unfortunate husband,” Chirrut said. Baze harrumphed, but he still brushed Chirrut’s cheek gently.

“Trust me, I’ve seen what the Spirits can do,” the man said in a low voice.

“Cassian?”

Scrambling sounds. The man was running to the edge of the cell, where the voice was coming. Were the cells connected by a window? This Cassian cried, “Leia?”

“Cassian! Did you get captured too? Is Erso in there with you?”

“They took Jyn somewhere.”

“They took Bodhi as well. Who are those men with you?”

“Perhaps some introductions are in order. I am Chirrut Îmwe,” Chirrut interrupted brightly. He liked this woman’s voice. Destiny, it felt, was calling him towards it.

There was a pause. Then, grudgingly, “I’m Cassian Andor. We met in the plaza.”

“He’s Water Tribe,” Baze said to him. While Chirrut had been born blind, he understood the Four Nations and their cultural and geographic differences. He catalogued this in his mind. “And your friend that was taken?”

“Jyn Erso.”

“Seemed Fire Nation to me,” Baze grunted.

There was a longer, more pregnant pause. Then, “Yes.”

Fire Nation and Water Tribe working together? It was like his favourite opera come to life! Baze, gliding his hand gently over Chirrut’s back to let him know he was moving to the – window? – said, “Spirit’s hairy balls!”

“ _Baze_.”

“The Avatar’s in there. Or at least…” the cynicism returned to his beloved, “The ones who the stories talk about. Southern Earth Kingdom?”

“It’s a bit complicated,” the woman’s voice said, “I’m Leia Organa.”

“I’m Luke Skywalker, her twin.” A bright male voice. The two voices of the Avatar. By the Spirits, he was blessed, to sit here and listen to them.

“It is an honour, young Avatar,” Chirrut said warmly, “I wish we were standing on rock so that I could see you in some way.”

“Come again?”

Chirrut preened. “I see with earthbending, sensing the vibrations in the Earth. It makes me quite a formidable fighter, if I do say so myself.”

“Careful with that ego,” Baze chided with affection.

“Formidable how, old man?” This was a second male voice. “Han Solo.”

“ _Definitely_ Fire Nation,” Baze supplied.

“Hey! Only half. I’m from the Colonies.”

“The key to earthbending,” Chirrut said placidly, as though he had not been interrupted, “Is to wait and listen for the perfect moment to strike. Relying only on the vibrations of movement, you can easily find a weak spot to exploit. Neutral _jing._ ”

“Until you get overwhelmed, and then I have to step in,” Baze muttered. Chirrut sighed internally.

“That’s brilliant!” at the same time as, “Can you teach us?”

“Wait,” Chirrut frowned, “You have not mastered your own element?”

“Well…no,” Luke said, uneasily, “But we’ve mastered Water and we’ve started air.”

“But you’re supposed to follow the cycle -” Well, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. All was as the Spirits willed it, though. Chirrut wagged a finger in what he guessed was their direction. “First thing after we get out, you are being trained!”

“Yes, definitely.”

Chirrut grinned. “I think this shall be an excellent teaching relationship.”

“Alright, good, one problem down, but we still need to get out of here,” Cassian said.

“Relax, Andor. We’ve been in worse prisons than this.”

There was a grunt. Chirrut stared in his direction. “There are many kinds of prisons. I sense you carry yours wherever you go.”

There was utter silence. Smiling to himself, Chirrut turned back to the Avatar.

  
Enfys landed on the sand outside the massive entrance of the Catacombs. It had been hewn into the rocks. In the distance, she could hear the screaming begin. Was there a way to join the fight? Her lip curled bitterly. Cassian would never allow it.

Circling the building, she found two sand-sailors. It would have to do.

  
They dragged Jyn through the Catacombs. Everywhere were Partisans who watched her with cold, wary eyes. Some she thought she recognized. But there was only cool indifference there. The old tombs were dark, and had been retrofitted with armoury stocks, eating tables, gambling areas, and messenger bird stations. She saw Partisans hauling blasting jelly and discarded Fire Nation spears.

At last she was pushed into a room. And there he was. The five years had ravaged Saw. New scars puckered his dark face. Using his airbending staff as a cane, he pulled himself towards her. A metal piece had replaced one of his legs. She fought to keep her face steady at the sight of the crudely made leg. How did he fly with it?

“Jyn,” he rasped, “Is it really you? I can’t believe it.”

The walls in her head that had kept back Lyra and Galen, the Fire Lord, everything from the before, shattered. Her voice brittle, she said, “Must be quite a surprise.”

He stopped a few feet from her. “Are we not friends?”

“I didn’t think friends abandoned you,” Jyn said.

“You were sixteen,” Saw said, his face crumpling, “It was wrong of me to put that burden on you.”

“You _dumped_ me! I didn’t have any more use to you!”

She breathed heavily. The accusation hung between them, a thrown gauntlet. The pity on Saw’s face was too much. “It was becoming too dangerous for you on all sides. They _knew_ Jyn, why do you think they exiled you?”

The scars on her body hurt. She wanted someone to bleed, to look her in the eyes and say, _I love you_ , and it was not a tool, not an exception. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you.”

“Well, here I am,” she said, “With more information for you to use.”

Saw raised his hands and bent. The movement pained him. He managed a small puff of air that he forced into his lungs. Now she saw the gauntness of his face, the gasping breaths he took. He was old and sick and he was a gaping hole, his bending almost lost to him. Saw had sacrificed too much, and at what cost? “They say you hunted the Avatar, and now I have them, here in my cells. Or who they claim is them.

“And now you come with a scroll from the Fire Nation, talking about rebels, ending the War – what is this, Jyn? Who do you work for? Have you joined the enemy?”

“I… This isn’t about me. Cassian – the rebels, they think the message is about a weapon. I…didn’t have anywhere to go.”

Saw looked at her now. She was stripped clean, sixteen again, desperate for a word, a promise, anything, to prove she was not forgotten. “But what do _you_ want, Jyn?”

She could not find words. Her anger ( _she loves her father, she loves her father, she loves Saw, her second-sun_ ) rose up, foul and ugly, and she said, “I just want out.”

“There is no out, Jyn, with the Fire Nation flag reigning across the Four Nations,” he said, tears in his wet, rheumy eyes.

“It’s not a problem if you don’t look up,” she whispered, and felt as though she would be sick. The ghosts whispered.

Who are you, and what do you want?

Her answer wounded him. She could see it on his weathered face. “Here,” he said, producing the scroll. “I will translate it for you. Your Father wrote to you.”

“To me? He wrote…to me?”

His face softened. Gently, he unfurled the scroll and began to read. “Saw, it is time I explained what I have been doing all these years. I hope it is Jyn who has brought this message to you, that she knows how my love for her has never wavered, and how desperately I miss her.”

The words washed over her, burning her. “Jyn, my Stardust, what you must think of me. Everything I did…”

“I did it to protect you,” Jyn whispered hollowly.

“I knew that if I took my own life, or tried to flee, Krennic would soon realize that the project was nearly complete. So I lied. I made myself indispensable, so that I might lay the groundwork of my revenge. They call it the Death Star. When summer ends and the comet comes, it will be unleashed. I have placed inside it one weakness. Oh Jyn, my Stardust, I wish that you were here. I try only to think of you in moments when I am strong, for the pain otherwise…is unbearable.”

Hot tears spilled down her cheeks. In the distance, she could hear shouts and rubble falling, but it made no difference. She had waited five years for this, still _this_ – information and love, so intricately woven together, she could not separate the two. “The cooling systems of the superweapon are unstable. A disruption to it in the ventilation system will bring the whole thing down.”

The noise of war was getting louder. “My Stardust, oh my Stardust… I hope that I will see you again before I am gone. I hope that you are still alive out there.”

Saw went silent. Jyn felt her knees give out on her. “Did he write _anything_ else?”

He wasn’t listening. The scroll had fallen from his trembling fingers. Saw was standing at the window.

Jedha was on fire.

  
The Partisans were scattering and yelling. In the confusion, Cassian forced his metal picks into the lock, throwing the cell door open. There was horrible rumbling in the distance. “Come on, out!” he yelled. Malbus grabbed Îmwe’s hand and helped him to the door. Cassian freed Luke, Leia, and Han. They scrambled to their feet, scooping up their abandoned possessions and weapons. “Where are you going?” Îmwe asked, once his feet were back on solid ground.

“I need to find Jyn and Bodhi!”

He found Bodhi almost immediately. The man was tied to a chair in one of the rooms. Cassian cut him loose. “They, they pumped me for information,” Bodhi began to babble, but he cut him off. “Get outside, now! I’m going to find Jyn.”

Cassian ran, calling her name. In his mind there was only that single, burning thought. He was so _tired_.

There. Jyn, collapsed on the ground. An old airbender looming over her. Saw Gerrera, who had used her, Leia had said. “Jyn, we have to go now,” he said.

“Go with him!” Saw Gerrera rasped. Jyn looked at him, wild-eyed. “The Partisans must fight against the army!”

“No, no, it’s suicide, Saw, you have to stand down, surrender -”

“Jyn.” The man’s voice was tender. “There will be no mercy from your people today. I will run no longer.”

There was no time. Cassian threw Jyn bodily over his shoulder and ran. He felt her shaking fingers cling to his coat. Outside, the city was burning.

There, too, was Enfys, with two sand-sailors. The animals were already boarded inside. Jyn was shaking as he set her down. Bodhi ran forward. His eyes fixed on the city. Something seemed to snap in those large eyes, and he swayed. Malbus held tight to Îmwe, who was shaking. “Baze, tell me,” he gasped, “The whole city?”

“All of it,” Malbus said hoarsely.

“Your family has been evacuated,” Enfys said softly, “Neighbours, too. I saved as many as I could.”

“All those tanks,” Luke whispered.

“My father made those,” Jyn said. She sounded hysterical. “Saw, oh by the Spirits, Saw, we killed him…”

“We have to go,” Cassian said firmly, grabbing her shoulders and dragging her into one of the sand-sailors. She collapsed onto her knees, eyes fixed on Jedha. Canon fire from the tanks smashed into the side of the Holy Temple.

“We need to help them!” Leia and Luke cried at the same time.

“There are nine of us! I can’t even waterbend right now! We need to go!”

“You wouldn’t -”

“We have nothing!” Cassian snapped. “We don’t know anything about the Death Star! The War…we don’t know how to end it. We risked everything to get all the way here, and we _failed_. We can’t save the city! Luke, Leia, please, just do as I say.”

It was the most selfish thing he had ever said. And it was the wrong time.

“You didn’t fail.” The voice thrummed with power. No. No, not this. Not now. Luke and Leia’s eyes were glowing. “ _We_ will make it right.”

Air and sand began to swirl around them, smashing outwards in massive whirlwind. He heard his friends shouting. Kay screeched out a warning towards him. Cassian crouched, hanging on desperately. He had to stop this. It had to be him. It always had to be him. Obi Wan was gone. Cassian had to keep them moving. In the sphere of air, he saw Luke and Leia begin to rise. “Run!” he yelled, “I’ll take care of them!”

“But who will take care of you?” he heard Jyn say.

Cassian fought his way towards the twins. He grabbed their hands. Their heads snapped to look at him. The raw power burned in those glowing eyes. Cassian pulled them into his arms.

In his arms, the Avatar shook. Luke and Leia sobbed. The wind dropped. He sank to the ground, holding onto them. One moment. Just let Luke and Leia rest a moment. Then he dragged them onto the sand-sailors.

They fled, leaving Jedha to its fate.

  
Hedala Fardi escorted Jedha’s refugees towards the nearby settlements. Some would want to go to Mon Cala, the last great free Earth Kingdom city. She earthbent tunnels and passageways underground, watching as the families huddled together, holding torches. Some sobbed, thinking of those they had left behind, their homes, their lives. She saw Tana Rook clutching her daughter’s hands tightly, asking anyone if they had seen her three sons.

_Saw Gerrera is dead_ , rippled across the masses.

When they stopped to rest and eat, Hedala pulled parchment from her pack. After scrawling a letter to her family about the refugees they need to help, she began to write a second message.

Finishing, she made to address it, writing out the looping letters. Then she recalled herself. Ahsoka didn’t call herself that, anymore.

_Fulcrum_.

  
Coruscant. Night.

Vader soaked in the cool bath of herbs and salts. Waterbenders, taken as slaves, applied healing to his burnt and ravaged skin. The burns would never heal. But it was here, and only here, that he was not aflame. One went near the mangled remains of his right hand, from that first Separatist battle all those years ago. He waved them aside. He hated the touch of the slaves. As a child in the desert, he’d believed these foreign people were magic, walking on water or hewing cities from earth. Now they only looked pale and frightened. _Tell them how magical they are_ , Sidious had laughed once, when he had shown him the prisoners in Fortress Inquisitorius. Perhaps it was a small blessing the burns had disfigured the brand on his neck.

An aide entered the suite. “My lord, Director Krennic has arrived.”

In a few minutes, he was sealed once more within his armour.

Vader took his time as he walked leisurely into his reception room of the palace. Krennic’s face was tight and drawn. “Director Krennic.”

“Lord Vader.”

Vader walked towards the large veranda, parrying the meaningless pleasantries. How he hated these snivelling bureaucrats. Krennic grovelled. That damned Death Star. Vader dismissed the man with a simple threat. “You will not rest until you can assure that Galen Erso has not communicated with the rebels in any way, or the Fire Lord will be _most_ displeased. Find the girl.”

In his chambers, Vader was presented with three missives. The first was from Fett. _Jabba’s put a bounty on Solo’s head. Solo travels with the Avatar._

The second was lengthier, but no less to the point. _Based on my information, I suspect that the Avatar will head east to Mon Cala after fleeing Jedha, where I have installed myself. I await your arrival._

And the third, _Hey, Sir Vader, funny story (no hard feelings on the double-cross?). I saw your kids in Jedha. Their friend, told me when I was hired that they might head East afterwards. This make us square?_

He summoned his aide. “Prepare my ship. I will be there shortly.”

The hour was late, but he knew the Fire Lord was still discussing matters with his petty admirals and generals and governors. Vader swept through the palace. The hands that spun the Fire Nation War Machine were spilling from the throne room.

Vader pushed aside the curtain. On the throne sat the Fire Lord, wrapped in a dark black cloak. He approached, and knelt. “Yes, Lord Vader?” the Fire Lord said. That voice, once kind and fatherly, was soft and sinister. “Ah…Anger, great anger. Have you something to say?”

The carpet was smoking beneath him. “Some proud, defiant words?”

The Fire Lord smiled.

Vader bowed his head. “I am angry. You would not have me otherwise. My anger brought me to you.

“I want you to know, I will not fail.

“And I understand _us_ precisely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: the aftermath in the journey east to Mon Cala
> 
> Comments are always appreciated!


	24. Book Two: Empire X

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feliz Navidad readers! Enjoy the new chapter!

Jyn ate and slept and spoke to no one as they travelled. Saw, Saw who had loved her in the only way he could, was dead. She hated herself a little for sobbing. She sat next to Bodhi often, holding his hand. She did not know if it helped. But the warm weight seemed to ground him. He began to eat after the third day – what little food they had, anyways. They were living hand-to-mouth, going through the desert. On the fifth day, he spoke. Cassian looked at her, sometimes, as though waiting for some explanation, but he let her keep her vigil. Why are you letting me stay, she wanted to ask. But that seemed the wrong question.

Why am _I_ staying?

Jyn sat on the rickety sand-sailor, stroking Bodhi’s hair as he slept. The A – Luke and Leia, were training with Chirrut right now. They were learning quickly under the powerful, though chaotic, master. She watched idly as Chirrut tossed rocks at them. As Cassian finished the meal, he cleared his throat. The twins stopped, the group assembling for dinner. Jyn shook Bodhi awake.

“So, what now,” Luke said, his voice flat. “Is it too late now?”

Jyn felt Bodhi’s hand on hers. “No, it isn’t," she spoke up. 

“Seems pretty late to me,” Baze said under his breath.

“Saw read me the message before…” She hurried on, before Bodhi or Baze or Chirrut could speak, “My father told me about the Death Star.”

“So, it’s real and he built it.”

The comment was neutral, but Jyn’s temper flared. She rounded on Cassian. “Only because he knew they would do it without him. There’s a trap inside. On the Day of Black Sun, the first day of the eighth month, when a solar eclipse happens, the Fire Nation will be vulnerable to attack for eight minutes, right? We can destroy it then!”

“What kind of trap?” It was Baze who spoke. She turned away from Cassian’s unblinking gaze. Those silver-coin eyes – he would always put his friends before himself, before his own life. And she was not one of them.

“He said,” Jyn recalled, pushing her fears aside, “He said the cooling systems are unstable. A disruption to the ventilation system will bring the whole thing down.”

“And did he say what the Death Star _is_?” Leia said, folding her arms.

“No…I…I’m not sure. I don’t have the scroll and…” She looked back at Cassian’s face. “And Saw was the only who could read it, and I…”

“He chose to stay,” he said, unexpectedly gentle. “But I’m not the one you need to convince.”

“I believe her,” Chirrut said. She could see the group considering. Luke spoke up lowly. “No matter what, we need to tell the rebels about the Day of Black Sun.”

Cassian nodded slowly. “I agree with Luke. We need to find a city to establish contact.” Cassian smiled at him, and Luke’s face softened.

“You’re thinking like a spy,” Leia said, “If we’re going to invade the Fire Nation, we need more men. To the East is Mon Cala, right?”

Han nodded. “Seat of the Earth King.”

“We head to Mon Cala,” Leia said decisively, “We need to speak with the Earth King to gather his forces. So that…” Her voice broke for a split second. Han touched her shoulder gently. Rallying, she finished, “So that Jedha’s destruction was not in vain.”

Each member of the group raised a hand in agreement. Then, tentatively, Bodhi raised his hand too. Jyn hated how scared she sounded. “You’re going with them?”

“Jyn,” Bodhi said. It was the same way he had spoken to her at the North Pole. She dropped her gaze, bile in her throat. “You’re the only one of us who actually heard that message. You need to give your testimony about the Death Star. Afterwards, you can leave again…”

“You don’t mean that.” Stop sounding like a _child_ , she told herself.

“No,” he admitted, “I don’t. But I’m going to do right by myself now, Jyn. I have to listen to what’s in my heart, and make it right.”

What do _you_ want?

The gap of his shirt exposed the beginnings of Vader's burn on his chest. Saw was dead. Tana and her daughters, who had looked at her as _monster_ , pale-faced horror of their nightmares. She could not leave Bodhi to this danger. She allowed herself to know that much. Anything else was a revelation she was not ready for. “Alright,” she said, “I’ll go.”

It was decided then. Jyn lay on the ground and wondered where her father was. He had built her into a weapon, and loved her. She rolled over and tried not to think of it.

  
The sun had not yet risen. They had left early to start their journey as soon as possible. To the East, the great outer wall of Mon Cala. The city sat on the coast, with a great land-bridge covered in refugee tents leading to its gates. They had no identification papers to get through the checkpoint there. The only other option was the land-locked Kessel Sea, that functioned as Mon Cala’s natural moat. How many had been turned away and found themselves braving its treacherous water.

Han pulled the plan from his pack as his friends began to unload the Falcon. He felt strange being here again. The shore, the raging sea, the refugee camps – it was as though he had never left. It no longer filled him with self-contained wonderous excitement: the refugee camps could no longer be ignored. Even with the bounty hunters dominating his nightmares.

“Alright, split into two teams – I’ll supervise one, Chewie the other.”

“The bear supervises?” he heard Erso mutter. Chewie gave a warning rumble that had her inching towards Rook and Cassian.

“Okay, not you two,” Han said. Chirrut was poking at the parts with his cane in interest. His intimidating husband grunted something about making breakfast and tugged him away. Soon, they were deep in grease and splinters putting the boat back together. Leia was beside him. The spring weather had her rolling up her sleeves. Han admired her forearms. The muscles in them flexed as she turned a bolt.

Leia, under the moonlight. Leia, saying goodbye to him at the North Pole. Leia embracing him. Leia, furious at the thought of him leaving. Leia, Leia, Leia. Five years ago, a romance had ended here. Now – now the future was uncertain. The score with Jabba hung over his head. So too, the comet and the invasion.

“What?”

Han looked up. “Just thinking, Princess.”

She sniffed, fitting together the metal pipes that would hang the sails. “You’ve been here before?”

He nodded. “Back then I had an expert navigator. She died on the journey.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged, the movement more to keep the conversation along. Elthree had been a slave. He had accepted that, once. She should have lived. He should never have laughed and snorted at her. “Was a long time ago.”

“Do you feel guilty?”

Leia always knew him too well. A season ago, he would’ve scoffed. Now he shrugged and kept his eyes on his work. “Was chasing a girl who’d moved on ages ago. Only one who couldn’t see it was me, because back then -”

“It was all about you, yes Han, I remember,” she said.

“Lucky for you, people change,” he said boldly. She flushed. Then her voice hardened, “Some people, I guess.”

Han stopped. He looked at Leia’s pale, drawn face. The shadows under her eyes were stark. “Jedha wasn’t your fault, Leia. You can’t win them all.”

She closed her eyes for a moment. “Thank you,” she said at last.

  
By mid-morning, they were ready to set out. Full as they could be from the last crumbs of the food, they clambered aboard the Falcon. Chirrut very carefully boarded, looking ill already. No more walking, at least for a little while. Cassian’s feet would thank him. “Since we don’t have my old navigator,” Han instructed, “This is going to be harder. Cassian – at the bow. You’re going to waterbend us out of obstacles.”

“When you get tired, Luke or I will swap in,” Leia said. Cassian nodded.

“Enfys, crow’s nest. Scout ahead if you need to.”

“There isn’t a crow’s nest,” Enfys said, but she glided up easily and made herself comfortable on the top of the beam.

“Malbus, keep him from vomiting on my ship. There’s a bucket down there.”

Baze nodded, helping a green-looking Chirrut into the hold. Cassian stretched his limbs. The sea, glittering in the spring sun, sang to him. No more deserts. Unable to stop himself, he bent a few orbs, relishing in the feeling. Behind him, he heard Jyn speak. The water fell back into the sea with a splash.

“I spent five years on a ship. I can take over the engine when you tire.”

A pause. Then, “Alright, Erso. No tricks.”

“Course not. If the ship goes down, I do too.”

“Charming.”

“I can help Chewbacca with the sails,” Bodhi added. The bear warbled doubtfully. Still, he allowed Bodhi to grab one of the ropes.

Bellied by Leia and Han’s bickering, the Falcon entered the Kessel Sea.

Luke understood Chirrut’s nausea. The ship was constantly ducking and rolling. Every few minutes they had to frantically avoid a treacherous collision or whirlpool. He was now the one waterbending. Cassian was curled up on the deck, out cold. Han was asleep as well. Enfys was flying to scout ahead, while Bodhi kept watch, awkwardly balanced on the cross-beam. Jyn manned the engine, jaw set. “Skywalker, reef ahead!”

Luke bended the waves frantically, curving the ship rightwards. Jyn grabbed Cassian’s ankle to keep him from sliding. “Can’t you give us some firepower?”

To his surprise, Jyn let out a bark of laughter. “That’s not how firebending works.”

“Wouldn’t know, didn’t get very far!”

“Fraternizing with the enemy?” Leia said softly, coming up beside him. She leaned against the bow and watched the black sea. Luke waited patiently for Leia to speak her piece, though he already knew parts of it. At last, quietly, “Do you ever think, what’s the point?”

He looked down at his twin. He could not voice the fear aloud. She nodded, understanding. “We save the North and Jedha falls. Mimban, Savareen, and on and on. The War is so big.”

“You said on Naboo we would make it worthwhile,” Luke whispered.

“Things are different now, aren’t they? It’s hard to feel hopeful.”

There was a soft rustle of feet as Enfys dropped onto the deck. They turned to greet her. Jyn was watching them with a strange expression. “We’re about one more day’s travel to the shore,” Enfys said. They nodded.

As Enfys walked towards the hold, Jyn spoke. “In Jedha, Tana Rook told me something important. She said that sometimes rebellion is the small things. Stealing food. Hiding a stranger.” Her eyes flashed. Jyn knew hope, even if it was in its worst form. “Giving a message. In Jedha, Tana sheltered Bodhi and us. Tomorrow you and Bodhi rally the Earth King. You're being awfully melodramatic! It's not over yet!”

Enfys paused, and looked back. “So that’s why Bodhi missed you so much,” she said with a smile. “Hope isn’t something you find, Luke, Leia. It’s something you have to keep giving yourself. In the Savareen desert there is no water for miles. But I remembered its taste. So I tried in Jedha….”

“You saved so many people,” Luke insisted. “Don’t _ever_ blame yourself for that.”

Her eyes glittered with tears. She walked and held her hands out. Luke grasped them immediately. After a moment, so did Leia. “You have to remind yourself that it was you who carried yourself all this way. It was you who crawled from the sand and took up the fight,” Enfys said, her eyes far away, “And it was _you_ who healed.”

Releasing their hands, she turned back towards the hold. “You’re brave,” Luke said, the words spilling from his lips. “You’re brave to hope.”

Enfys smiled. “Get some rest, Luke.”

He turned back to the sea, interlinking his fingers with Leia. He still felt the raw wound of Jedha. But the ache had eased.

Cassian came to when he heard a strange crunching noise. Shifting and clutching his aching head, he saw that Bodhi was asleep against the mast. He turned. Jyn was staring at the engine, a spot of grease on her nose, looking displeased. “Jyn?”

She startled and looked at him. He couldn’t tell if she was more surprised that he’d said her first name, or that he was awake. “This ship’s stupid engine stopped working. How did you all keep getting away in this hunk of junk?”

He cracked a smile at the exasperation on her face. It was so human, as human as she had been on Hoth, in Jedha. More calmly, he asked, “What broke?”

“The engine.”

“Yes, but which part?”

“I don’t know, whatever makes it go! The loud fire part!” she said crossly.

“Weren’t you on a ship for five years?”

She went quiet. A guilty expression crept across Jyn’s face.

“You’ve fixed engines before, haven’t you?”

“Well, I – not _personally_ ,” she blustered, “I’ve been on the ship when it broke down.”

“You’re joking.”

“I was the Captain, my job was to -”

“Hunt us down?”

“Keep morale up,” Jyn finished, glaring. Cassian sighed, though peculiarly he didn’t feel annoyed. “Okay. I can fix it.”

“What? _You_? But you've never been on a Fire Nation ship, you're Water Tribe!”

“Who says I've never been on one,” he said vaguely, gesturing for her to move aside so he could look at what she’d done. There was a whole stack of tools and grease. Cassian wanted to keep his distance from this strange, green-eyed girl who got directly under his skin. But he can’t help, “Did you try taking apart the engine w _hile we’re on the water?_ ”

“Now why would I do that?” she said, suddenly preoccupied with organizing the tools by size. Cassian almost laughed. He directed her to light the furnace, coaxing her fire to go hotter, hotter still… “See that steam?” he points, “It's just a leak. We need to patch it up and the engine will work again.”

Now he couldn’t help smiling secretly at her frustrated expression.

Some of her guard seemed to slip as they worked to seal the leak. It was easy, he thought to speak to Jyn. Soon, she asked how he’d known. And he found himself telling her about how, after the raids had begun, he’d left with his father and the ships to protect territory. He was small, and quiet, and a waterbender. His father had been killed, and Cassian had kept going.

“How long were you away for?”

The question perplexed him. “The War began when I was six… it would have been a bit after.”

“And when did you come back?”

Cassian frowned. “I would come and go… how long I stayed depended on what I was assigned. I would tell Leia stories, or my sisters… waterbenders I’d found on the Moon, or earthbenders who held up the world.”

“It must have made them happy,” Jyn said, finishing her handiwork. Cassian didn’t respond. He had lost his family, but in a sense they had lost him first. The days of childhood were blurry – but he remembered weaving with his mother, chasing Leia around the village, telling his sisters silly stories. And he had tried to keep that when he returned and could stay for long periods. But something had shifted. And then one by one they had died, and he had grown quieter, as he tried to take care of what he could. Trained Leia and himself. _Where do you go, when you’re home?_ Leia had asked once, after he came back from another long walk across the glaciers.

“Cassian?”

He snapped out and looked at her. “I asked, what will you do once you win the War.”

“I’ve never thought about it,” he admitted. His eyes flickered over the hold, where his friends were. Jyn’s eyes followed his. “Keep busy, I suppose. I get restless.”

Jyn nodded thoughtfully. Then, without a trace of envy or upset, “You’ll figure it out. There are people who love you enough to stay,” and he understood, then, the difference between pity and forgiveness.

  
Leia walked quietly through the hold. Chirrut and Baze were fast asleep in each other’s arms. Their easy affection arose a great envy in her. Quashing it furiously, she began to dig through her pack. Pulling out some crushed and pathetic-looking sweet potato, she began to chew on it. They had run low on beans, maize, dried meats, all food she achingly missed from Alderaan. _Platanos, tamales, arroz y habichuelas,_ she was so hungry. Her stomach, her heart, felt like an aching hole. When they reached Mon Cala, the first thing they needed was food.

“Oh, it’s you.”

Han crossed the hold and stood in front of her. “Yes,” Leia said, aware of the boxes around them, the quiet darkness, Han’s dark, handsome eyes, “It’s me.”

“Share, Princess?” He gestured to her food.

“Don’t call me that,” she said, but she dropped a few into his palm.

“Knew you found me alright sometimes.” Leia watched him pick at the sweet potato skin and pop it into his mouth. _It’s not your fault,_ he’d said. So kindly. “What’s that on your hand?”

“Cut myself when we were rebuilding the Falcon.”

“Lemme,” he cleared his throat, “May I take a look?”

Leia extended her hand. His worn, callused palms carefully unwrapped a cloth round it. Her skin ached. She had seen Baze kiss Chirrut’s palm once. She wondered what Han’s lips felt like. Her skin was open, wanting. “Should be fine. When Cassian isn’t keeling over, you should ask him to heal it.”

“Thank you.”

Her hands were still in his. She did not remove them. “You cold? You’re trembling.”

“Kiss me,” she breathed, and he did.

His lips were soft, and his mouth was warm. Leia wound her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. Han made a low, pleased sound. His hands rested gently on her back. If Chirrut and Baze awoke and saw, Chirrut and Baze, Jedha…

Leia tore herself away. “No,” she said.

Han’s face became guarded. “Leia, I…”

“No,” she said more firmly, “There’s a War going on, I’m the Avatar, we’re losing the War, I… I can’t do this right now, Han. I can’t. I can be your friend, but I can’t give you more than that. Not right now.”

Han nodded slowly. “Okay. I respect that.”

Whatever she wished to say was cut off by yelling from above. “Sea monster!”

They put it aside for now. She had his back, he hers. That was most important.

When they made it to shore, wet and soaking from the horrible kraken, Chirrut practically kissed the sweet ground. “Please don’t kiss me with that mouth,” Baze muttered. But his eyes crinkled with a smile as Chirrut exclaimed that he could see him again. Luke saw Jyn helping Bodhi and Cassian to shore, all looking exhausted.

They began to disassemble the Falcon. “So how do we get into the city?” Luke said.

Han sucked in a breath. “Well, that’s the thing kid. There’s supposed to be a tunnel around here.”

“Remember our lessons,” Chirrut instructed. Obediently, they reached out. Luke could feel the particles of the earth below him. He could feel the vibrations of his friends moving, the worms and crabs beneath. He could feel the soft arms of the sea wearing into the shoreline. And he could feel –

“The tunnel is gone,” they said together. A crushing weight fell upon his shoulders. Leia cursed. All this way…

“Excuse me! Are you refugees – the Avatar!”

It was a pale man with loose brown hair and a long nose. An expression of joyous wonderment crossed his face before he straightened into a professional appearance. “Why did you ask if we were refugees?” Leia said warily.

“Some who have lost everything chance passage through Kessel,” the man said. “General Ackbar feels it isn’t right to turn away those that make it. Come with me.”

“You’re Fire Nation,” Jyn said suddenly. “I recognize your accent.”

“I _was_ ,” the man corrected. “I’m Wedge Antilles. I defected from the army.”

“We’re here to see the Earth King,” Luke said. “We have plans to win the War.”

Wedge reached into his armour and pulled out a small seal. “When we enter Mon Cala, head to the Inner Ring. General Ackbar’s seal should help your passage.”

Leia took it reverently and placed it within her vest. Then they followed Wedge through a series of twisting rock cliffs. Carved, or perhaps earthbent, into the wall were a set of steps. At the top was a small wooden door. “Knock three times, wait, then three times again, when you get to the top. From there, you’ll find the monorail station to take you into the heart of the city.”

“Thank you,” Luke said.

Wedge nodded, smiled. “May the Spirits be with you.”

He and Leia linked hands. Together, they went up to meet their destiny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leia is thinking about fried bananas, sweet potatos, tamales, rice and beans (I realise I never translate any of the Spanish in this fic, whoops), which are all, delicious. Also, given that Jyn, Enfys, and Leia are all essentially martial artists in this fic, they'd all be pretty muscular and have the bodies to match. Han, of course, wants Leia to crush his head like a watermelon, as do we all. 
> 
> Next chapter should be up a bit later next week instead of Monday (I'm posting my Rebelcaptain Secret Santa), but prepare for all my favourite tropes in the next update: telling each other stories from their cultures, star-gazing, name-meanings, and discovering how easy the other person has become part of your life's routine. Also, trying to warn the Earth King.


	25. Book Two: Empire XI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a minute with Christmas and New Years and the RebelCaptain Secret Santa Exchange (do check out everyone's lovely works!), but we should be back to our regularly scheduled programming. 
> 
> 1) Cassian gets a fortune told in Chapter 8 (Interlude: Fortunes) that he will fall in love with a powerful bender, which is referenced in this chapter. 
> 
> 2) Jyn has a secret identity as the Kestrel, a Water Tribe Spirit, which was mentioned in Chapter 7 (Book One: Hope VI) and Chapter 10 (Book One: Hope VIII), which is brought up here.
> 
> 3) Mon Cala is based off Mughal-era India (some utterly gorgeous architecture there). Mughal Cities did not have the walled, square design of traditional Chinese cities, but they did have fortified cities, so I see Mon Cala as that but on a massive scale with multiple layers of fortification (hence why its remained unconquered in this fic). 
> 
> Content warning: [spoiler character] is a racist POS; misogynistic language

His network of whisperers moved efficiently. As Cultural Minister, spies, informants, the blackmailed, all were at his beck and call to ensure that the inner working of Mon Cala functioned as smoothly as possible. He knew Mon Cala’s wheels of power, had made himself indispensable to all around it.

The letter from Lord Vader rested on his desk, as a loyal spy spoke the words he had been waiting for. “The Avatar has arrived,” Pellaeon told him. An exceedingly competent man, with the high-bridged nose and fair-to-olive skin of native Corellians. A rags-to-riches bureaucrat who understood the Earth Kingdom’s need for aggressive centralization of power, and a strong figurehead to keep it in line, after a lifetime serving as Mon Cala's Economic Minister. “What do you propose we do?”

“Allow them to settle. Keep eyes upon them, but nothing more for now. Continue to collect information on each individual.”

He traced over the files before him, cobbled together mainly from rumours and Fire Nation reports. _Erso_ , his finger traced over thoughtfully. That meant Krennic was to become a player. Regardless, Mon Cala’s time had come. The Avatar was a handsome bonus.

“Sir?” Pellaeon asked.

“At the moment, we must delay. We are not yet ready to move against the Earth King, and we must assess these new factors.”

His thumb traced over one particular sentence. _A Southern Waterbender,_ the report said. Curious. The Southern Waterbenders were supposedly extinct. “And Pellaeon?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Monitor what they send out, and what they receive.”

Picking up his stylus, he began to write.

  
The monorail, powered by earthbenders, cost several of their coins. Damp and sticky, they settled down in the cheapest car. It did not escape Leia’s notice the divide between the first-class car and the last. This car had plain and functional benches, where belongings had to be carried on the lap or held onto. They were crammed in with other refugees, an awed delight on their faces. The car was packed, ripe with the scent of unwashed bodies, animals making an absolute racket. She could only imagine the luxury those in the first-class car received.

Still, the monorail was a beautiful white stone, intricately carved, with a domed roof that narrowed to a point. Squeezing herself towards the window, she leaned her arms over the stone lip. There was no glass, thankfully. She sucked in the fresh air. Her friends joined her. With a jolt, the monorail began to move. There was a steady creaking as the earthbenders moved the cars along. They crossed huge rolling hills of crops and other harvests, a magnificent quilt of every colour. The bright saffron was mesmerizing as they arched over.

Then someone cried out, “It’s the inner gate!”

The monorail moved through a tunnel in the huge fortified walls, bursting out into light.

Mon Cala! City of a million souls! Leia had heard the songs, but what were songs to all this _life_? Loud and swirling with activity, industry, bustle, and sheer exuberant business on the edge of the continent. Thousands of domed and terraced homes, covered with bright tiles and swirling carvings. Market places, courtyards, a thousand water gardens. In the centre, the palace, built of thousands of domes and terraces, home of the Earth King. Flags waved in the wind as the city stretched out beneath the tracks of the monorail. Leia stuck her head out, her hair whipping in the wind, as she tried to drink everything in. She could smell food, animals, hear the cries of a thousand languages, as the city rushed out to the very edge of this lip of land, onwards, towards Sriluur. Everywhere, brown-skinned peoples of every shade went about their business, in flowing cotton clothing dyed from bright yellows to rich greens, earthy browns, soft white and deep black. This city – this city was unconquerable.

The monorail ground to a halt at another wall. “Middle Tier and Upper Tier only!”

The car they were in began to empty out. An irked official looked in and barked at them, “Out! All refugees out!”

“We’re not refugees,” Leia said sharply, “We are here in our official capacity as the Avatar to meet with the Earth King. As you can see here, we have the approval of General Gial Ackbar, and in the first place, why can’t the refugees enter-”

“And I’m the Earth King’s long-lost son,” the official snapped, not even looking. “Out!”

They were strong-armed from the monorail. Leia kicked and cursed. “Hey, calm down,” Han said, “We’re filthy. They’re not going to believe us.”

He was, infuriatingly, right. They were coated with dirt and grime from days in the mountains, the dust of Jedha, and salt of Kessel. In a place like this, Leia thought grimly, rank and station mattered. General Ackbar seemed an anomaly. “We need to find a place to stay, clean up, and regroup,” Leia said. “We’re going to need money.”

Han produced the bag of gold from the Water Tribe. “This’ll do.”

Leia stared at it, and then at Han. _Kiss me._ “You’re -”

“Came this far with all the bounty hunters,” Han shrugged, “Might as well stick.”

Leia, unable to stop herself, beamed. “Bodhi, Chirrut, Baze, and I will find a place,” Cassian said, taking the bag, “Kay, with me. The rest of you wait here. Leia, the seal.”

It was several hours before they returned. They settled as far from the officials as they could, leaning against the wall of the monorail station. Artoo and Chewie were good to lean against, even if their fur smelled awful. She let Threepio take a fly around, although he immediately was picked on by some local birds and had to be rescued. Jyn, Luke, Enfys, Han, and Leia talked in the meantime, and eyed the food- _wallahs_ peddling their goods hungrily. Someone, taking pity on their thin and dirty faces, gave them some nuts to eat. At first, Jyn was largely withdrawn and sullen. But she began to warm, laughing quietly at some of Han’s jokes. At last, as dusk began to fall, the others returned, exhausted and sweaty. The money bag was considerably emptier. “We got a house, food, and odds and ends.”

The Lower Tier was full of rickety houses made from baked bricks and wood. Leia saw some sleeping on the streets. No one here would ask for much. She suspected that her friends, particularly Bodhi and Chirrut, had felt compelled to pay extra. Their house was remarkably large, with a three-tiered roof around a large courtyard with an ornamental fountain. Unlike the others, it was built of stone. “How did you find this?” Leia asked.

“Ackbar. He’s respected here – throwing support behind reformists,” Cassian said, as they filtered inside. “Apparently this was the home of a Lower Tier governor that agreed with Ackbar. He was removed.”

For the moment though, they needed to settle in. There were two large bathing rooms, one for the men, and one for the women. Nobody bothered to fill in the large carved baths, too exhausted. Enfys and Jyn dragged heavy buckets into their bathing room, while Leia ground up soap. She let out a delighted sound when she began to scrub the grime from her skin. Beneath, her body was changed. More softness had been replaced by muscle. The soles of her feet were thick and hard now, from two months of walking. She looked at the other two. Enfys’ sinewy, straight body was marked with scars and faded burns. They criss-crossed her arms, her breasts, her thighs and stomach. A lifetime of War. Leia noted, also, that Jyn’s more muscular, athletic frame had feathery, faded scars, of unknown origin.

Picking up one of the buckets, Leia dumped water onto Jyn’s head. “What the _fuck_ -”

“Your hair is absolutely filthy,” Leia said, soaping it up. Thankfully, Jyn and her had similar hair textures, so Enfys wouldn’t have to share her coveted hair items. Jyn tried to tug away from her, but Leia forced her to sit still. “I’m trying to help!”

“I don’t need help!” Jyn sputtered, as Leia raked the soap through her hair. “You’re gonna get soap in my eye!”

“Well then stop thrashing! For Moon’s sake, don’t you normally bathe?”

“I don’t normally bathe with other people!”

“Oh,” Leia said, dropping her hands. She mentally kicked herself for her own cultural insensitivity. The three of them stood, at an impasse. Jyn scowled, her body seeming to fold into itself, trying to cover the scars. Enfys’ eyebrows rose. With a somewhat exaggerated confidence, she continued to wash herself, pinning her hair up that exposed yet more evidence of war across her skin. Jyn’s eyes followed the movement, returned to Leia’s face. Huffing, she sat down on the lip of the stone bath. “Well? Get on with it.”

“I’m not your servant, Erso,” Leia muttered. But she continued to run her fingers through Jyn’s hair, which was impressively caked with dirt, sand, salt, and blood. As she did so, the firebender’s shoulders slumped, the tension beginning to fade.

When they were done, Jyn made a weird sort of grunt that Leia realised was thanks. She exchanged a look with Enfys. “Maybe she needs time,” Enfys said charitably.

“Time until she disappears on us,” Leia said. All the same, she handed Jyn some of her spare furs to use as a makeshift bed for the moment. They tossed their clothes into a metal tub to soak overnight.

“Thanks,” Jyn muttered.

“I’m sorry, what was that? Did I hear thanks? I didn’t quite catch it.”

“Go fuck yourself, Organa.”

Leia rolled her eyes. As she lay down on the soft bedding in her underclothes, impossibly hungry but too tired to eat, Leia felt a sudden bright flash of guilt. Here, she was content, warm, and clean. Outside, people were living in squalor. They needed to find the Earth King, in more ways than one.

  
Jyn couldn’t sleep. She could hear Leia and Enfys slumbering in the room. Getting to her feet, she found her cloak and wrapped it around herself. It was spring, and on Coruscant, or Lah’mu, it would have meant warmer rains. No snow in the Fire Nation. Saw had largely stayed in warmer areas, but she'd hardly had time to notice the passing of seasons there. Everything had been fast, and brutal. She stepped out of the room, and crossed out into the courtyard. Someone was sitting by the fountain, maps unfolded. He glanced up, making eye contact.

Uncertain, she and Cassian just looked at each other.

“What are you doing?” she asked, a little rudely.

He raised his eyebrows. “I’m marking our progress and route down. It’s good to keep track of these things.”

Cassian shifted some of the maps aside. Like a skittish animal, she sat a little away from him. There was a map of the Four Nations, but she saw he also had a map of the night sky, though she could not read the Water Tribe writing. “A star-taker would be helpful,” she said. At his expression, she clarified, “It’s a navigational tool in the Fire Nation. I don’t know the right word in Basic.”

“Star-taker,” Cassian repeated, amusement in his eyes as he looked up at the sky. “So, you did do something onboard that ship.”

If it had been Bodhi, she would have shoved him. But it seemed too familiar for Cassian. Instead, she shifted her body so that she was turned towards him. “You have to look at something, out there on the water.”

“What can you name?” he asked curiously, setting down the stylus. Jyn’s finger traced. “There. The Seven Sisters.”

“The Marketplace,” he said, pointing to a pictogram on his own chart. He paused, looking at her, as though waiting in anticipation for an explanation. His face did not change, but it was not angry, and she took that as a good sign.

Jyn didn’t consider herself very good at telling stories, though she had always loved listening to Lyra’s. Cassian was quietly attentive as she told him of the Seven Sisters who had been pursued by a great hunter. The Sun spirit, taking pity, had turned them into doves. But the hunter was wily, and still found them. So Sól used his fire, and the great dragons carried them away, and –

“What was that word?” Cassian asked.

“Katasterismoi,” Jyn said, “In Basic, it would be, uh, ‘to place into the stars.’”

He hummed thoughtfully. “Are there a lot of stories about becoming stars, in the Fire Nation, that there’s a word for it?”

“Maybe a few.”

“If it were a Water Tribe story, the hunter would get eaten, for thinking he was owed them.”

She jerked her head up at his statement. But Cassian’s eyes were only curious, his body still turned towards hers. They were from such different places. She shrugged lightly. “The stars are fire, aren’t they? So, we must have the final say.”

She thought, in the darkness, he might have smiled. “Another night I’ll tell you my story. Then we can decide.” He stood, gathering his maps. “Goodnight, Jyn.”

As he left, she looked up once more at the stars. She would like to hear that story. And then she would tell another, and he, and then…

And then what?

“There must be some session where the Earth King meets with people,” Leia was saying as they ate breakfast.

“Apparently it’s been out-sourced to lower officials,” Cassian said, chewing on some flatbread. Baze said frankly, “Something’s not right about this place.”

Everyone agreed. “So, what do we do in the meantime while Cassian does his sneaky spy stuff?” Luke said. Cassian felt vaguely insulted.

“Wreck the courtyard with earthbending practice,” Chirrut said nonchalantly, devouring some yoghurt. None of them knew where to store it after purchasing it, so they were making good progress eating it.

“Just don’t touch the structural beams and it should be fine,” Baze said. Cassian did not like how amused he seemed by Chirrut’s comment.

“We’ll also need to do some air, and waterbending training,” Enfys said. It was decided then. Cassian saw Jyn and Bodhi exchange a glance.

  
He found her sitting in the courtyard, looking up at the sky. Bodhi had announced that if everyone else was going to be gathering information or training, someone needed to make sure they had money. A tea-shop in the Lower Tier they’d passed earlier had a friendly owner, looking for more hands. Jyn had nodded absently in agreement. “You’ll have to be careful,” Cassian said, probably knowing she'd seen him approach, “You don’t want to be recognized.”

Jyn nodded, pointing meaningfully, and a little sullenly, towards her hair. She could leave it down. “And your name…”

“It’s a Fire Nation name,” Jyn finished. She nodded towards the sky. This was common ground, between them. “A star name, actually. They say that it will make you a powerful bender.”

A really weird expression crossed Cassian’s face momentarily. “The Fire Nation is very pretentious,” he said, and it almost sounded like he might be teasing.

Jyn took the bait. “Oh, and what does your name mean, mighty Water Tribe?”

“Nothing.”

“Cassian means nothing?”

“Technically, the best translation into Basic would be ‘empty’,” Cassian said.

Those blank, silver-coin eyes that had haunted her. “That seems like a cruel name to give a child.”

“A lot of names are passed down for good luck, so the original meaning doesn’t matter,” Cassian said, “I know at least a dozen Marias, and that means bitterness.”

She laughed, then sobered. Empty. “Well, anyways. I’ve already been using another name here. Lynna.”

She saw Cassian’s brow furrow. How many languages could he speak? “Doesn’t that mean…”

“Lake,” she said, and thought of the depth of his love for his friends, the way he smiled and laughed with them, this ocean-man, if that was why it had sprung into her mind, all those months ago, “Technically, ‘deep water’.”

Jyn stood quickly, before Cassian could ask more questions. She wondered if he'd given this same speech to Bodhi. “Goodnight, Cassian,” she said. She fell asleep almost immediately.

Bodhi and Jyn worked their job. Cassian suspected it was more because Bodhi was restless and Jyn was...

Lost, he supposed. Like he was.

He came to the kitchen early one morning to find her there eating. There was the warm scent of Chirrut’s _bao_ , filled either with meat or sweet yellow egg-custard. Her hair was down. It made her look younger. A white apron was tied to her waist. Cassian sat near but not too close. There was an oozing cut on her cheek. He eyed it. Jyn's eyes were focused on her plate. He said, “I heard a rumour that a person in a blue Kestrel mask got into a run-in with some gang members.”

“Really.” Jyn met his gaze and continued to chew her food.

“I also heard that the Kestrel rescued Luke from Tarkin, using only tonfas.”

“Wow.”

Cassian sighed. He bent water from the cup and held it out. “Let me heal that.” When she shook her head, he said more firmly. “It’s going to get infected.”

Her eyes flickered between the water and his face. Finally, she nodded. Cassian cupped her cheek. Beneath the cool water, the cut began to close. Her cheek was warm, the skin a bit weathered from five years at sea. The edge of his palm brushed the corner of her mouth. He wondered why she was beating up gangsters at night. Maybe there was freedom, in hiding behind a mask, being someone else. “You’re good at this,” she said, watching him.

He shrugged. “I’m not a healer.”

She didn’t say anything to that. But her hand when she removed his was gentle, and she squeezed his fingers lightly. He found he missed the warmth, and tried not to dwell on it.

Every morning after, she would be there. In these quiet moments, Cassian found that Jyn was terrible at telling stories (“wait, I remember the punchline, just give me a minute!”), listened well, and wasn’t that bad a conversationalist, even if their conversations sometimes strayed into the absurd (“olive oil is not a food, Jyn!”). It felt like his own secret challenge to make her laugh. Other times, it was soothing, to sit in quiet, and know it was not empty. He, or anyone else who was awake, would walk Jyn to her job afterwards. Despite everything, she was still being kept in sight.

One morning, he came down, a missive burning in his pocket. It bothered him how long it had taken to get a reply. When he'd opened the message though, he could only feel ill.

_On the move. Do not send crucial information by message if you can help it. Galen Erso is integral to Fire Nation Military program. When he is found, there will be no extraction._

He ate stiffly. A thousand faces swam across his vision. He was not a healer. The vials around his neck, the title bestowed on him, Moon Healer, were sharp and cold. You had to keep moving. He would fall apart otherwise.

“Cassian?” He looked up. “You going to walk me there?”

“No,” he said, “You can go on your own.”

She blinked in confusion. Then she nodded, a slight curve to her lips. Her footsteps were very light. His faith, perhaps, carried her.

Cassian thought he was going to be sick.

  
One evening, Cassian walked in and deposited several papers in the centre of their eating circle. “The King is having a gala at the palace tomorrow night for some spring festival. I’ve gotten fake identities for me, Leia, Jyn, and Enfys. We’ll enter the gala as guests and find the Earth King.”

“What about the rest of us?” Luke asked. Leia picked up one of them seals and saw it was for one Lora Kabadi, the youngest daughter of a perfume merchant. Cassian’s was for Joreth Sward, a low-ranking army official.

“The women going because they’re likely to be underestimated in this city. The rest of you can’t be trusted to hold a disguise together.”

“HEY!” Five voices rose in protest.

Jyn had picked up her identity, Tanith Ponta. She was examining it with acute displeasure. Enfys touched hers, one Kayla Erin, hesitantly. Leia wondered if either of them had ever been in upper-class settings before. She thought it very unlikely in Enfys’ case. Admittedly, something like this didn’t exist in the Water Tribe either.

“We’ll need to get the right outfits, shoes, everything,” Leia said thoughtfully. She had been schooled enough to know it mattered in some places. The other two cringed.

Late the next afternoon found them preparing. She'd gone out to purchase clothing, coming home to find the others had been muttering among themselves. Leia hoped they weren’t about to try anything stupid. Han and Bodhi had both given her very unconvincing reassuring smiles. Pushing it from her mind, she passed a pile of fabric to each woman. Hers and Jyn’s were various shades of green, while Enfys’ was yellow.

Enfys dubiously held up fitted blouse. “Are we supposed to wear anything under it?”

“We’re not going to be running around or fighting if everything goes to plan, so you don’t need to hold your breasts in place,” Leia said, slipping on the blouse, exposing her belly. Jyn followed her, mouth turned down. The scarring, Leia noticed, was exposed on both her arms and stomach.

“We look too muscular to be court ladies,” Enfys muttered as she shrugged it on.

“As long as we have the right attitude, they’ll overlook that…failing,” Leia sneered. She had copied down what the shopkeeper had said about how to wrap the long petticoat. It took her a few tries before she could make it look presentable. It was a lovely soft cotton. She thought she would probably be able to run in it. But there was no way she could bend easily in the skirts. It was intensely beautiful, but Leia had lived a hard, practical life that her own safety and comfort were always on her mind. She pulled her hair into a long braid down her back. After that was a soft veil that lay over the crown of her head. She helped to pin a few embroidered clips into Jyn’s bun, before settling a veil on her as well. Leia turned to Enfys and her tight curls. “Um…I’ll let you handle it.”

Enfys smiled slightly, her fingers working to fluff out her hair. Leia pulled out the makeup. She withdrew a wand and pot of kohl and moved threateningly towards Jyn. “So…I think this goes on your eyes…”

Jyn leant very far away from her. Leia bit back a laugh. “Oh, you _think_?”

“I’ll figure it out, now hold still!”

“You’re going to stab my eye out! I’m not wearing that.”

“You are a such a brat,” Leia chided, but she put it aside. She had already washed her face and was not about to waste time if she couldn’t do it properly. Jyn flushed, realised Leia was teasing, and flushed harder. It would almost be cute if she wasn't such a loose canon. Enfys had finished her hair, her red curls in a soft afro around her head, with a jewelled clip by her ear. They each put on bangles, Jyn complaining that they'd been rattling everywhere, the last were the heeled shoes. “These hurt,” Enfys said, once she had taken a few steps. Leia agreed. Jyn grunted, looking especially displeased.

“Oh, wow,” Luke said as Enfys exited first. At her displeased expression, he quickly amended, “You look _much_ better, and happier, in your armour.”

The airbender sighed, crossing her arms over her breasts. Cassian, the lucky man, wore only a long, embroidered cotton shirt, loose trousers, and bejewelled slippers. “If we aren’t back by midnight, you have my permission to break into the palace and prisons,” he said. He stared at the webbing of scars on Jyn’s arms, shook his head as though sobering, and quickly ushered them out.

Mon Cala! Bustling city of a hundred thousand souls! And, he thought quietly, as he observed the arriving guests, ten times that number of actual people.

A firm hand was needed, here, amongst these primitive peoples. Soon, the years-long operation would be complete, and order would reign. A door opened. The footsteps of an adult. His aide spoke, “Are you sure they’re going to be coming?”

 _Anxious. Somewhat awestruck,_ he observed. Having Eli around did good things to a man's ego. “I have made sure the identifications and gala presented themselves to Andor in a suitable way. They will be here.”

He rose, smoothening his crisp white shirt and trousers, decorated with gold embroidery. “Let us be going, Eli. We must greet our guests.”

“I really don’t think Cassian is going to like this,” Bodhi muttered, peering over the edge of a crate. Beside him were Chirrut, Baze, Han, and Luke.

Ignoring him, Han said, “Okay, so the plan is we dress Threepio up like a ghost.”

“He flies by the guards, creating a distraction,” Luke continued.

“Then, I earthbend a hole in the wall,” Chirrut said.

“ _Or,_ we could just go in with the servants,” Baze said, pointing.

“Oh, right…”

  
Jyn wanted to shatter a window and jump straight out. There were too many people, milling about, or relaxing on cushions and chatting with finger food. She needed to press her back against a wall, a corner if she could find one. Enemies could jump at you from all sides, Saw, her life as a hostage, had taught her. There had been a small handful of social events when she had lived in the Fire Nation, stifling, too many men looking at her. Her father had always looked ill and afraid during them.

Where are you, Papa? Do you think me dead, since I no longer write to you?

She felt Enfys’ arm around hers. Her skin was warm, shocking Jyn back into her system. People were swarming around. Quickly, she linked elbows and tried to move them in a clearer direction. Cassian and Leia had been swept away by the crowd at the entrance, Cassian throwing up some cover story, Leia hissing under her breath at him. _“Tu **esposa**?”_

Jyn really wished she knew how to speak Water Tribe. She had no idea why she was momentarily irritated, only that she was.

“Do you think we should ask someone about the King?” Enfys said in a low voice. "I don't see anyone in a crown... do they wear crowns, here?"

Shrugging, Jyn marched them towards a server. With Saw, she hadn’t been trained to be sly and cunning – just full of teeth and anger. Saw had no time for tricks, not like Cassian. “When is the King coming?” she demanded. The server stared at her blankly, before hurrying off. They kept trying, but none of the servers wanted to answer. Either they were that well-trained, or someone had told them not to. They moved through the crowd, trying to find someone who would talk. As Enfys grabbed them some dessert to eat, they collided head-long with a man.

He swiftly readjusted his clothes, trailing his eyes from their feet to faces. “Ugly bitches,” he commented in Basic.

Jyn surged forward, but Enfys caught her arm. With a forceful tug, they stumbled over to some cushions as far away from the crowd as possible. Along the way, Enfys grabbed an entire tray of shot glasses from a server. They sat down, not bothering to adjust their skirts for propriety. The bowls turned out to be rice pudding, sweet and flavoured with dessicated coconut. They really should have been trying harder, but Jyn was exhausted, her feet hurt, and she _hated_ how people were looking at her. She'd rather they look at her because she was pale-faced, not because she was a woman, and not a pretty one, to them. 

“I hate social gatherings,” Jyn muttered, eagerly scarfing down the food. The glasses contained some fruity alcohol. “Oh, that is _strong_.”

“Did you do this often?”

Enfys was looking at her with wide, innocent eyes – slightly foggy from the number of shot glasses she’d downed. “A bit,” Jyn said, hiccuping. “In the past. Before I was exiled.”

“You were exiled?”

She nodded abruptly, feeling the scars on her body itch. Jyn grabbed another shot glass – what a brilliant girl, Enfys, thinking to take them. “It was a long time ago.”

Enfys went quiet. Then, “I think I’ll airbend this spoon to hit that man.”

Jyn glanced between the spoon, and over at the man. Enfys grabbed her shoulders so that Jyn didn’t slump over trying to get a good look. “You’ll never make it that far without someone seeing.”

“Then we’ll gamble!”

“But – but airbenders don’t believe in money.”

“Oh, you’re right. Promise not to tell!”

Jyn considered. She extended her hand. Enfys looked baffled, but shook it, taking a few seconds to get a good grip. Smirking, she bent a small puff of air. The spoon spun over her palm, making Jyn’s head ache.

Like an arrow notched from a bow, the spoon shot across the room, bouncing right off the man’s head. The two women stifled laughs as he looked around frantically. Jyn breathed in, controlling her inner flame. Firebending came from the breath. Though her stomach did feel a bit overly flammable. With an exhale, she blew out a thin stream of fire. The top of the man’s pompadour began to smoke. They howled with laughter as he frantically batted it out. Jyn burped, exhaling a small cloud of smoke. Enfys nearly fell over, cackling.

At this point, one of them really should have noticed how brisk the alcohol they were drinking was. _Deliciously_ brisk.

“Let’s do this to the Earth King next!” Enfys said excitedly, raising her hands, “Server! More of this stuff for me and my friend!”

“We’ll put these wretched shoes through – listen! You’re not listening!”

“I am, I _am_ -” Enfys downed another glass from the frightened looking server, “But Jyn, isn’t that – that’s an act of War?”

“Right, because I’m a – a – a -” Jyn tried to remember. In all the chaos, she’d forgotten about what had started all this. “Oh, firebender. _Right_.”

Enfys nodded sagely. “So what we do – what we do – Jyn, you have to listen carefully! – is I’ll take down the Earth King and then you -”

“I’ll rule from the shadows,” Jyn finished, “They’ll never suspect that we’re in ca – caho – whatever the Basic is!”

“Yes!” Enfys threw out an arm, airbending the motion and nearly cutting Jyn’s head right off. “With my airbending and your -”

“I’ve got – got these stick things, they’re so cool -”

“Brilliant. So we kill the King and then -”

“Then we change all the decorations to orange. So then it belongs to you. Wait, hang on, what about me?”

Enfys mulled over this, hiccupping. “Well, orange and red are the same thing, aren’t they? It’s a…like a bloody orange!”

“That -” Jyn grabbed Enfys’ face, eyes glazed, “Is the _smartest thing I’ve ever heard_. You’re so smart and powerful, I’m gonna beat the shit out of that guy – server! Where’s that man! And more of this stuff!”

Enfys thought about this for a long time. “You know, you’re actually really nice. Be my friend?”

Jyn stared at her. She started to laugh, linking sticky fingers with Enfys. Enfys laughed too, hiccupping a few times, and kissed both of Jyn’s cheeks. “We’ll beat him up together! Ooh, what’s his name is coming at us!”

Cassian was marching towards them, with Leia on his arm. He looked so handsome. Even if a vein in his forehead was twitching. Jyn took another shot, because it was making her feel very eager to keep staring at Cassian. “Let’s run!” Enfys cried, tugging Jyn right out of her heels. They stumbled through the party, wind blowing people’s clothes around.

“Tanith! Kayla! Get back here!”

“I should tie him to a tree again so we can be friends,” Jyn slurred.

“Can we tie Luke to a tree as well? I want to climb him – hello, Luke!”

  
“What are you all doing here?” Leia hissed. A drunk Enfys was using Luke as support for her feet, practically nuzzling into her brother’s neck. Threepio – why the Spirits did they bring _Threepio_? – was flying wildly overhead. None of this distracted Leia from glaring at her contrite twin and his four co-conspirators. Jyn, equally sloshed, helped steady Leia, who was tottering in the heeled sandals.

“Thanks,” Leia said, before swiftly turning back to her brother. She would chew the two idiots out later.

"It wasn't my idea! Damn, she is _drunk_ ," Han said.

"I am not," Enfys mumbled, throwing out a hand. Han moved her arm so that it was now resting on Luke's shoulder. "You smell nice -"

"Can we just focus on finding the King?" Cassian said loudly, "Jyn, where are your shoes?"

"Lost them," Jyn said, swaying. Leia resisted the urge to groan. And those shoes had been expensive!

There was a shout. “The King is entering!”

A litter of servants, carrying a covered a sedan chair, entered. Instantly, the group focused. Leia stepped forward, forgetting her irritation. How to get the attention of the King? She started to push her way through the crowd. A hand touched her shoulder.

An official in white said, smoothly, “Excuse me, young Avatar.”

Before they could react, a retinue of black-clad soldiers encircled them. Jyn, sobering, reached for a concealed knife. Leia grabbed her wrist and shook her head. If they fought this official right here, they would look suspicious. The man gestured. Without much of a choice, Luke picked up a near asleep Enfys, carrying her in his arms as he joined Leia’s side. Warily, they followed him into an office. The soldiers snapped to attention outside. Once they were all present, the man closed the door. Chirrut could earthbend them all out easily. She remained calm. Leia took quick stock of the room. The furniture was sparse and impersonal. Artwork hung from the walls, matching sculptures and ornamental vases. On the desk was a little wooden ornament. A Kalikori. Leia had seen some in Hoth, from the Water Tribe on Ryloth. Rolled-up scrolls covered the remaining desk space.

The man settled himself down on a simple cushion. The group remained standing. Leia could get a good look at him now. The man’s skin was extremely pale, with unhealthy blue undertones. Like Tarkin, his cheekbones were sharp. His hair was an inky black. Most unnerving of all were his red eyes.

She had heard stories from her parents about the people from Csilla, an island far to the Northwest, pale as Fire Nation. They kept to themselves, away from the affairs of others. But some said they were red-eyed. What was this man doing here? Had he too dreamed to make it to Mon Cala, to make a new life away from his tiny island home? Her time in the Lower Tier told Leia this was dreamed all the stronger by Mon Cala's sleepless peoples. This man did not match that, in her eyes.

“I am the Grand Secretariat and Cultural Minister to his Majesty, Lee-Char,” he said, “My name is quite impossible in Basic. You may call me Thrawn. You are the Avatar, are you not? I recognized your faces.”

“Yes,” Leia said sharply. “Why did you prevent us from meeting the Earth King?”

“You would hardly have met him in this sort of gathering. His majesty only provides a brief appearance, given his health. Moreover, the Earth King’s guards are suspicious in this wartime. They are trained to kill first and ask questions later. But tell me, you snuck into the Gala. I am intrigued by why.”

Exchanging glances, Cassian said, “We have critical information regarding the War.”

Thrawn nodded. “I see. Then the Earth King must be informed. I will arrange a meeting as soon as possible. I'm afraid his majesty is swamped, given Mon Cala's troops are heavily engaged in the War Effort. Your address, so I might contact you? Thank you, dear.”

“We’d like to see the Earth King now, if it’s all the same to you.”

Thrawn’s raised an eyebrow. “His majesty’s health is delicate. One does not simply pop-in on the Earth _King_ ,” he said, emphasizing the word, “Not even the Avatar.”

Not breaking eye contact, Leia wrote their address down. Thrawn smiled benignly. They were dismissed.

  
Cassian heard the others muttering as they were evicted from the Palace. Putting up a fight was a bad idea at this point. His mind scrambled for a solution, but none came yet. Chirrut was saying. “There is something not right about that man. His heartbeat was calm and steady, not like he was lying, and yet… it is not _right_.”

“City of walls and secrets,” Baze muttered to himself.

A liar. But why lie? Because the King didn’t want to fight? Or something else, some other secret that was festering within the upper echelons. Chirrut placed a hand on the twin’s shoulders, who were seething. Luke was still carrying a dozing Enfys. He wondered what the airbender would think of Thrawn. “Remember, neutral _jing_. Now is the wrong time to fight. We let them believe they have won – while we find the truth.”

They smiled fondly at their master. But he saw the anger on their faces, all the same.

Cassian felt the letter burning in his pocket. If he couldn't make contact, then they would have to find out more about Thrawn on their own. And that would take time. The comet was coming in only a handful of months. His eyes fell on the web of scars on Jyn’s arms, but her eyes were turned to the night sky, lost in thought, sober in the night’s chill. Would Jyn leave, now?

 _Jyn is a star name_ , she had said. Whatever Jyn’s star-taker was, he imagined someone plucking the stars from the sky, and keeping them. Just for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Gilad Pellaeon is a Legends continuity character who was Thrawn's right-hand guy. Eli Vanto appears in some of the new Disney Thrawn material...which I skimmed because, hot take: I don't like Timothy Zahn's writing, you may burn me at the stake if you wish. 
> 
> 2) Jyn identifies the Pleiades, which the Aztecs saw as the "Marketplace". The 'star-taker' is an astrolabe. 
> 
> 3) All the code-names are from canon/Legends continuity, except Enfys', which is an amalgamation of the actress' real name + one of her other roles. Erin Kellyman also has some beautiful natural looks on her insta and I spent way too much time looking at them when I was writing them getting ready.
> 
> 4) High heels are bad for your feet. 
> 
> 5) I know/am related to way too many Marias. Latin-America got force-fed that Catholic juice.


	26. Book Two: Empire XII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter got LONG. At this point in the original ATLA, there's a fan-favourite episode called "The Tales of Ba Sing Se", and it's pure character moments - short little stories featuring the cast, some funny, some heart-warming, some tragic. It's one of the best episodes in the show. So get ready to guzzle that found family juice, plus, as I've teased to some people, the RebelCaptain date! 
> 
> 1) The story from the Cave of the Two Lovers in Chapter 14 (Book Two: Empire II) is referenced heavily here.
> 
> 2) The planet (wandering star) Cassian identifies as Quetzalcoatl is Venus. 
> 
> 3) The game "Elements" mentioned is the ATLA-verse version of scissors, paper, stone. 
> 
> 4) The friend Leia calls "Amihan" is Winter Celchu from the Legends continuity. It's the same character, but I've always found her name a bit cringe (she has white hair, and she's stoic...wow...her name is Winter...), and I felt it made even less sense in this AU. I did a bit of research and "Amihan" means "north wind" or "winter storm" in Tagalog. Given that the actress who plays Breha Organa in RoTS is Filipino-Australian, I chose it - who's to say Breha and Winter aren't mixed-nation in this verse? 
> 
> Enjoy! You all are wonderful.

Chirrut stretched himself out on the bedroll. He and Baze had their own room in the house, and it had slowly taken on a personal character. Baze was always careful to leave things in the same place, so Chirrut could memorize the layout and not turn an ankle tripping over something. Their shared bedroll. In the corners, Baze’s different explosives, carefully categorized. His armour, in need of a polish. Chirrut’s cane. Some experiments he was doing with making a reading system for the blind. Their home, for these long weeks in Mon Cala. He missed the apartment in Jedha, but he would not think of it. He would not.

Baze was nowhere to be found, but Chirrut was unconcerned. Aching pleasantly from a night of lovemaking, he dressed, picked up his cane, and headed to the kitchen. The house had a stone foundation with a wooden floor, so Chirrut could make out who was present. "Your turn to make breakfast?" he asked Han. "Edible, this time?"

"Ha-ha. It's eggs," Han responded. Still, he scooped some out from the wok and handed it over to Chirrut. He could smell tomato mixed in, with bread on the side, a very Corellian dish according to Han. If they'd had sugar, Han explained, he could make something better, but that was out of their price range. Smiling in thanks, he picked up the plate and walked to the courtyard. Ah, there was Baze, watering the plants.

“It looks very nice!” Chirrut called.

“Funny,” Baze said dryly, accepting a kiss on the cheek. He wondered if Baze missed their plants. Not much grew in Jedha, but Baze enjoyed it, all the same. He sat down at the edge of the doorway and chattered with Han while he waited.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, Luke and Leia, yawning loudly, stumbled in. “Good morning,” Chirrut said, “Grab your breakfast and we start a new lesson! Today we will expand your seismic sense, waiting and listening to the stone.”

When there was silence, he said, “You’re looking at me like I’m crazy.”

“Nooo,” they both said, but he clucked his tongue. He heard Baze settle down behind him to watch. Chirrut said, “Remove your shoes and spread your feet. Today we will learn to sense all over Mon Cala. Expanding your range over the city. There are many lives here, and many stories…listen…hear them…”

_The Tale of the Teashop_

“So,” the owner of the teashop says, looking at them across the table. “What work experience you got?”

“Uh, upper management,” Jyn fibs, trying to look polite and friendly. Cassian, who is sitting at one of the tables, stifles a laugh. Beside her, Bodhi was trying not to fidget. The teashop is not particularly well-to-do, serving the Lower Ring of Mon Cala. It’s tiny and cramped, with musty cushions and scummy cups.

The owner frowns. “Let’s see you preparing something.”

Bodhi is immediately in his element: heating the water, stirring in the milk, the spices, and carefully pouring it into the wooden cup. The owner drank heartily, nodding approvingly. “And her?”

“Uh, I don’t think she should be making the tea,” Bodhi says. Jyn glares.

“She waits tables then. Be polite, but if they give you grief, pinch your behind, that kind, you get the boys to -” She mimes a slap. The owner’s face twists. “Trust, girl, I know what it’s like being a woman here.”

Jyn nods. She’s been in Mon Cala long enough to see that – that it hurts the poor women, most of all. In her mind, she makes a list of who the Kestrel is visiting tonight.

“You have papers?” the owner continues.

They exchange a single, terrified glance. She hears Cassian beginning to stand. “Is okay,” the owner says, raising her hands gently, “We’ve had illegals before. Room in the back – hide there if the soldiers come. You are safe here.”

Jyn nods, tightening her grip on Bodhi’s hand.

The owner claps. “Okay, hired! You and your _gori_ sister start in five. Aprons on!”

“What does that word mean?” Jyn whispers, as Bodhi covers his mouth. Now he is smiling. Cassian has walked over, checking if they’ve got the job.

He and Cassian exchange a look. “ _Gringa_ ,” Cassian says, and both of them start laughing. At her expression, he amends, unrepentant, “I don’t understand how this economy works, but I’m sure you’ll do fine. Just don’t touch the teapot.”

Jyn huffs. Her tea tastes delicious. They have no idea what they’re missing. Bodhi touches her shoulder gently as Cassian leaves. “I’m proud of you, though, Jyn.”

“It’s just a tea-shop,” she mutters. Never mind that the tea-shop money is going to help the group. Never mind that tonight she will return to a warm meal cooked by loving hands. Never mind that she sleeps at night to the gentle breathing of two others, who trust her enough not to murder her in their sleep.

Bodhi ties her apron around her hips, snug.

_The Tale of Jyn_

Jyn waits tables. It is boring and unpleasant. Customers are very rude. One day there is a man who sits and watches her. He leaves a generous tip each time, watching her every move. “Bodhi,” she says, “I think the Fire Nation has found us.”

Bodhi laughs. “Jyn, he’s here because of _you_. And I have to say, he’s quite fit!”

Jyn is perplexed. Before she can stop him, the man, Hadder, has asked her out on a date. And Bodhi has said yes on her behalf. “Don’t tell Cassian,” Jyn hisses.

So that evening, Jyn puts on the beautiful clothes from the gala. This time, though, she wears boots. She rounds the corner to find Cassian. She can't decipher his expression, only that he looks uncomfortable. “I heard you were going on a date.”

There is muffled laughter coming from the kitchen, where Bodhi and Chirrut are making dinner. Traitors.

“Is that the time?” Jyn says, and bolts.

Hadder takes her to a tiny eating place. She talks to him. But what is there to say? He is handsome and friendly, but Jyn is not normal. She is not a sweet Mon Cala girl. Lynna is beautiful to Hadder, but Lynna is as empty as Cassian’s lies.

“I have to go!” she bursts out, and flees.

She wanders the streets. What now? Does the normal girl not receive a kiss at the end? But she is Lynna, not Jyn here. And Jyn is lost.

Her name is called.

She turns. It is Leia and Enfys, eating a late supper at an open-air restaurant. They are eating rice and mutton and dahl with their hands, and laughing. Enfys’ hair floats like a cloud around her face, free as a bird. She thinks of Enfys, at the gala, drunk, asking _be my friend?_ Leia washing the grime from her hair. Leia grins and waves. “Join us!” Enfys says.

And she does.

_The Tale of Han_

Han explores Mon Cala’s nightlife. He has not found much information, so he heads home, Chewie and Enfys beside him. It is easy to forget that they’ve a mission. Sure, the Lower Tier is no picnic. But sometimes it feels – and he knows Leia is making him all soft for thinking this – it feels like a home.

It is that exact moment that an arrow cuts across the side of his neck.

Han cries out in pain. He clamps his hand over the bleeding gash, stumbling to his knees. From the shadows erupts a canyon crawler – all multiple legs and too many eyes. Chewie roars, throwing himself upon it. A man, with flesh bulging from tumours, is firing arrows upon them. Enfys bends a huge gust to send them scattering.

Zuckuss, and his pet LOM. Just how many bounty hunters want Jabba’s money?

Enfys is struggling. Mon Cala’s streets are too narrow. She’s going to send an arrow through someone’s eye if she really lets her bending loose. People are fleeing, shrieking. It’s only a matter of time before the soldiers come. Fuck. He needs to protect Enfys and Chewie (maybe not Chewie. He’s ripping off LOM’s legs with too much glee) from his own stupid fucking debt with Jabba.

Zuckuss uses Enfys’ hesitation against her. He backhands her with one armoured fist. Enfys drops like a stone. Zuckuss fires off another arrow. This one cuts into his side, tearing his shirt. He stumbles again. The gash is deep. Zuckuss grabs him by the scruff of his neck. “Look at you, Solo,” he rasps, “Living in this shit-hole.”

“Hey, Zuck, now, we can negotiate,” he says frantically. Chewie roars out in pain in the background. _Get up, Enfys._ He’s never wanted more to have magic elemental powers. Any kind of power that isn’t ‘run for it’.

Zuckuss pulls a knife. “It’s 2000 gold pieces for you alive, 1500 for dead. I’d prefer you dead.”

“Easy there, call off your pet and we can -”

There’s a horrible screeching sound. Enfys, her nose bleeding, is standing. She spins her staff. Around them, the abandoned carts and stalls are splintering. A storm is gathering in the narrow alley. Air Nomads are pacifists. They’ll fight if they have to, for a cause, but they take no joy in killing.

“Chewie, get down!”

The hailstorm of broken wood, stone, and brick crashes through the canyon crawler as Chewie drops. The canyon crawler never stood a chance. There’s blood on Enfys’ face, trying to contain her own horror. _You’re gonna regret staying_ , he once told himself.

The storm shoots towards him and Zuckuss. Quickly, the bounty hunter whips Han around, holding the knife to his throat. Every single piece in the storm stops, hovering in the air. A wooden splinter the size of a sword rests against Zuckuss’ forehead. He imagines Enfys driving it straight through. The wind whirls around her hands, keeping everything suspended. She’s a kid, and she’s going to kill, brutally, to save his life.

“Drop it, airbender,” Zuckuss spits. Enfys looks between them.

“We can make a trade,” she says. “My bounty is five times Han’s.”

“You? You’re just a little girl.”

“Enfys, shut up!”

She ignores him. “I’m Enfys Nest.”

“Enfys Nest is a man,” Zuckuss laughs.

“Just let Han go, and I’ll prove it,” she says, her voice dropping into the false voice she uses with her mask on.

“How -”

Han bites down, hard and viciously on Zuckuss’ hand. The bounty hunter drops the knife. Han catches it with his left hand, driving it into Zuckuss’ thigh. His head snaps back. There’s a crunch of bone. Zuckuss lets go. Pulling the knife, Han stabs him. As Zuckuss drops, he whirls on her.

“Don’t ever do something so stupid -” he stumbles. Blood loss. Chewie bundles him up in his fuzzy arms. They take off back towards the house. “Don’t tell me not to defend my loved ones,” Enfys says sharply. He remembers when she was a scrawny little thing, tiny compared to Beckett, and Qi’ra. She's grown now, in ways she shouldn't have had to.

This is getting too tender for him, so he says quickly, “Aww, Nest, you love me? That’s embarrassing.”

Enfys sighs, patting his hand. They reach the house. Luke, and surprisingly Jyn, drag water into the atrium. Chewie sets him down on the carpet. "Thanks, kid," he groans, as Luke steadies him and removes his jacket. "Good thing you've got me learning how to sew," he continues, seeing the huge rip in his shirt. Luke tells him not to move around as he goes to get Cassian.

Leia rushes in, hovering and tight-lipped. Cassian gives him a once-over. “Jabba’s bounty hunters?”

“Yeah. Hurry up,” Han says, wincing in pain as he settles. That blood is not getting out of the carpet. Cassian bends the water, starting with Han’s side wound. He feels a cold sensation as the healing starts. “You know, I thought this would feel a lot more magical.”

Cassian gives him an unimpressed look. “I’m re-knitting together your flesh, blood vessels, and skin with water, and that’s not magic?”

“Must have something to do with your bedside manner.”

“Stop fishing for compliments,” Cassian says, mouth curving a little. He sees Enfys start to grin. Luke relaxes. He sees Leia begin to groan, as Jyn stifles a laugh. Bodhi, Chirrut, and Baze poke their heads in. If nothing else, he can at least do this.

Han smirks easily, settling into the energy. “I’d like to see you say something nice about me.”

 _“No._ Now let me do my job. _"  
_

“Cassian, say something nice!” at least three people cry, seeing Andor’s growing embarrassment.

“Really, _Leia_?”

“You’re being a baby,” Leia says placidly. Spirits, she’s beautiful when she’s about to fight, and beautiful when she’s smiling.

Cassian’s face screws up as he moves onto the neck wound. Finally, he says, like he’s being tortured, “You have good hair.”

“You’re so shallow,” Han deadpans, before yelping. “Did you just _freeze_ your bending water?”

“No,” Cassian says, all innocence. Han rolls his eyes. “You’re done.”

“Thanks Doc, touch and go there for a minute.”

A water-whip smacks him on the side of the head. The group starts laughing as Han tries to throttle Cassian. They’re really turning him into a sap, seeing everyone ease up now that the bounty hunters’ are out of the way. Makes him feel all soft inside.

Cassian fucking freezes his hands next, so he forgets about that real quick. He hates all of them, yes Sir.

_The Tale of Enfys_

Enfys is unsettled. Mon Cala is a city of fortified walls. She has only ever known the taste of the sun and the endless sky. The poverty – the very notion of ‘earning a living’ disgusts her. Is life not already of value, by virtue that it is life, that one has always had the right to live? She flies in restless circles, aching to send the inner walls crashing down. In the mornings, she meditates, contorting her body into unusual shapes to practice calm, but it brings her little peace. She hears the little click-click of Chirrut’s cane as he taps the wooden floor to find where the courtyard begins. “My, what’s happened to your body?” he cries.

A laugh escapes her. His seismic sense must be showing him a bizarre outline of her. “I’ve got my leg behind my head,” she says, uncurling herself.

“You’re making my old bones ache just thinking about it!” Enfys laughs again, knowing Chirrut is only in his fifties. He settles down across from her, folding himself into Lotus Pose. “What troubles you, little bison herder?”

“I – I’m not troubled.”

“But you are. An airbender should not walk around so heavily.”

“And an earthbender shouldn’t walk around like a ghost,” Enfys fires back. Chirrut grows silent. She drops her head.

Chirrut’s usually jovial expression slips. “We are both homesick, aren’t we?”

Enfys shudders. Gently, Chirrut takes her hands in his. He begins to sing. It is an old Air Nomad folk song, of her Southwestern Tribe. This is all wrong – there is no music in the Air Nomads without dancing and percussion, the bells and rattles. But Enfys appreciates it all the same. It is the song of Aura Poku, who sacrifices her child to lead her people to freedom. _Baouli_ , she weeps, the child is dead.

“Where did you learn that?” she whispers.

“Your people are Nomads – there were many who drifted to Jedha and became my friends,” Chirrut tells her, “If you would like, I would meditate with you in the mornings. So that you do not have to be alone.”

She squeezes his hands. “I would like it.”

The Air Nomads do not fear the darkness. Darkness preceded light, and it is mother. There is nothing lonely in it. In the absence of the comforting warmth of her dark mothers, sisters, lovers, she will take this bright bursting of noise all around her: Baze and Cassian having a disagreement over blasting jelly explosives, Bodhi and Luke laughing over some lame joke, Han wrangling Chewie and the pets – Leia appears before her, dragging a protesting Jyn. “Enfys, Jyn and I are going to get some polish for her tonfas. For _some_ reason, hers are getting dented.”

“No, I said I was going to the store, and _you_ said ‘someone should keep an eye on her’, and started following me.”

Enfys uncoils herself and stands. “Leia, don’t we have airbending training this morning?”

“No, we don’t?”

“Actually, we do. I forgot to teach you another Air Nomad tenet.”

“And that is?”

Enfys frees Jyn, who gives her a grateful look before escaping. “All life is sacred,” she laughs at Leia’s petulant expression. “Come on, little scary Avatar. Let’s train.”

  
As they go through the steps for the fifteenth tier, Luke asks, “What’s wrong?”

Can everyone see it? “I miss home,” she tells him.

“There are a million people here,” he says, “I wonder if there are Air Nomads, too.”

“Oh,” she thinks. There is something to be said for the simple clarity of Earth, in him and Chirrut and Leia, and she kisses his cheek in thanks. She wanders through the city, asking and asking. Have you seen them? Have you seen my people? “Go to the zoo,” an old woman says, “The zoo out near the farms, is run by those in orange.”

Enfys goes. Half-afraid, she takes Bodhi with her, and with Bodhi of course, comes Jyn. “You’re homesick?” Jyn asks.

“Aren’t you?” Enfys responds, to Jyn who was exiled.

“I have no home,” Jyn says, her eyes on Bodhi’s back. That’s wrong, Enfys knows. Jyn is wrong. But she is a child of wind, and the wind does not confront. So she lets Jyn be, feeling Bodhi and Jyn’s warm weight on her arms as they sit on the monorail into the agricultural ring.

And they find the zoo. She sees animals from all over the Earth Kingdom, goat-pigs and ostrich-horses and gorilla-goats and even something the old Air Nomad there tells her is a bear. “Just a bear,” he says in the Air Nomad tongue, and he tells her his name is Quinlan, and his pink-haired wife has the softest eyes she’s seen.

“Why are you here?” she asks.

“Everyone needs quiet, and peace, and I have been at war for too long,” he tells her, “Fly with me, little sister.”

In the air are six sky bisons. Enfys swoops and soars. She weaves between the soldiers on the Outer Wall and the cranes flying, and the sky bisons’ tails. Down below she sees Jyn and Bodhi picking their way through the orange and red fields of saffron and poppies, unfolding outwards like the sides of a jewel box. She is the wind itself. She is a child again, discovering that the earth will not hold her burdens for a time. _The child is dead_ , but right now she is free. Enfys whoops.

Quinlan even promises that she can borrow any bison she wishes. The homesickness, for a moment, eases. She will have to thank Luke, sometime.

_The Tale of Bodhi_

Bodhi is restless. He wishes to do something, anything, with his hands. But there is nothing to fix right now, and he does not know what to do with himself.

Luke is doing nothing as well. “Let’s see if we can meet this General Ackbar!” he declares. Bodhi wants to do something right, and this sounds good. Jyn gives him a little push to follow Luke.

He lets Luke lead them to the Outer Fort. There is Captain Wedge Antilles, helping some refugees. Ackbar is not there. But Wedge sees his shifting, and asks, “Maybe you would like to help?”

Bodhi does not know what to say. Luke smiles and says, “Yes, he would.”

“But Luke, I don’t know how to.”

Luke squeezes his hand. “You’ll learn.”

And he does. Soon, three times a week, Bodhi travels to the Outer Fort to help wet and trembling refugees into the city. Some do not make it. The first time Bodhi holds the dead body of a child and weeps is when he knows he can never, never turn his back on the people who need him. But there are others, that he pulls from the sea, and copies how Wedge blows air into their lungs, that do.

“Does it make you feel less guilty?” he asks Wedge one day.

Wedge says, “I’ll never not be guilty. But I can try.”

Bodhi tries. Wedge is handsome, and smart, and he understands. Perhaps, this, as they sit on the Outer Fort and watch the setting sun, this is hope.

_The Tale of Cassian_

Cassian feels a bit shame-faced. Everyone has been talking about how bad things are in Mon Cala – why does no one care for the poor and downtrodden here? He redoes the embroidery on his jacket, pretending not to hear. Enfys’ face is red, and she snaps and spits about this. Leia is mad too.

“At least the Kestrel is helping,” Leia murmurs, “Killing bad men around the city.”

Jyn’s ears go red.

But Cassian has been thinking only of the mission. Enfys and Leia shake their heads. He walks around outside, and sees the sad and hungry faces. He has been selfish. He has been cruel. The missive burns in his pocket. For a moment, perhaps he can stop.

Cassian thinks, and then, he knows. He asks Baze for some help, and together they interrogate and listen and snoop. Baze looks mean, warm as his soul is, and that gets you information quick. Then, he and Baze lead Enfys and Leia there.

“There are people who talk underground,” Cassian says, “About what the city could look like after the War.”

“And how could we help?” Leia asks.

“We come from people where there aren’t Kings or Queens. Maybe they need to know what that’s like.”

Enfys throws her arms around Cassian and Baze. “You two are better than I thought!” she declares. “Thank you, Cassian.”

It is a warm feeling.

_The Tale of Leia_

Leia wants to be good friends with Enfys (and Jyn, but she will not tell her that). But Enfys and Jyn both like to fight and explore. Leia loves sparring, but she is _so_ tired from all her training. She has never been good at making friends her age.

Then Leia finds a coupon.

“Let’s go to the public baths!” she says, holding it out to them. This is what normal friends do, right? “We can stop feeling aching and tired.”

“Only if they don’t touch my hair,” Enfys says.

“Or my face,” Jyn agrees.

The bath is beautiful. It is full of big tiled pools where all the women can bathe and talk without any men listening. Leia is very pleased. Enfys pins up her hair, and they scrub one another’s backs. Soon, they are laughing and talking with the other women there. “Kill him,” Jyn tells a woman about her cheating husband, and everyone concurs.

As the water starts going cold, Leia watches Jyn sneak her hand into the bath. Her fingers glow. Steam hisses out. She sighs. “I don’t mind having another friend from…that part of the world,” she says in a low voice.

“You’ve had more than one?” Jyn sounds surprised.

“Yes,” Leia says slowly, “Her name was Amilyn. Her father was a ship-builder, who brought us food when we were starving one winter. She’s dead now, probably. With all the other traitors to…her home.”

Jyn is quiet. “She sounds…one-of-a-kind.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Leia says, thinking of her friend’s brightly-coloured hair. The thought aches, so she pushes it aside. “I always wanted a sister,” Leia continues, throat closing, “Luke is great, of course! But…”

“It’s not the same,” Enfys finishes gently, “I have many, many sisters. I know.”

“I thought you were an only child?” Jyn says, baffled.

“Just because they didn’t come from my Mumma’s womb doesn’t mean they aren’t my sisters.”

Jyn seems to chew that over. “I had someone like that,” Leia says, embarrassed by her own inability to make friends easily, “Her name is Amihan. We were sisters; we grew up together. She’s so smart, and graceful. She memorized all the dances of the Tribe by the time she was eight. That’s why she left with the Southern Fleet to fight in the War.”

“Because she can dance?”

“Because she has perfect memory. She remembers everything that has ever happened to her.”

Jyn’s lip twists. “That’s awful.”

She agrees. “It’s not a gift most in these three generations would wish for.”

“I heard a saying,” Enfys says, tilting her head back, her red curls dangerously close to the warm water, “That it takes three generation to end the trauma.”

Jyn says nothing. But she hands Enfys the pumice, letting Enfys scrape the calluses on her feet. Leia trails her fingers through the warm water as they sit in comfortable silence. She imagines, for a brief, bright moment, the world after the War. Of brown-eyed children who bend earth, little red-haired airbenders who call her _Tía Leia_. She hopes her friend, Amihan, named for the winter winds, will one day come back to her, will nurse these children with her, in a tribe of Many Mothers and Sisters. She misses her Mamá and Papá as much as she resents them, and it makes her chest hurt. Enfys' statement is probably too optimistic, that they will carry the War all their lives, but she wants to hope. She watches Enfys splashing water at Jyn, shrieking, “If you get my hair wet, J – Lynna, you are a dead woman!”

She has lost two, but perhaps…

Later, some attendants spread warm mud on their faces, and scrub the calluses on their feet. The attendants sigh, and say men will not like how their skin is not smooth or refined. Enfys is indifferent, but Jyn looks uncomfortable.

“Shut up,” Leia says to one of the attendants. That chastens them.

As they walk out, skin fresh and perfumed, Jyn says, gruffly, “Uh, thanks. You’re not so bad, Princess.”

“Race back and spar?” Enfys asks. The mood clears immediately.

Laughing, they take off.

_The Tale of the Falcon_

It is a bright Spring day when they bring the Falcon down to Mon Cala’s harbour, sitting on the Southeastern tip of the continental Earth Kingdom. The sea and skies are a clear blue, dusted with white fluffy clouds. In the sea are hundreds of ships: _junks_ from Cato Nemodia carrying porcelain, jade, and silks, _jongs_ from the Southeastern Earth Kingdom archipelago, carrying sugarcane, sandalwood, feathers and shells, and fish, _dhows_ from Mon Cala, bringing out spices, and amber, even _ghanjah_ ’s from desert states, carrying both the indigenous Tuskens, as well as pale-faced settlers. In another life, there would have been Water Tribe ships as well, ships from the Southern Isles. Both these places have been devastated or occupied.

Still, it is beautiful, the rainbow of sails and flags, dense as a coral reef or a forest of kelp.

Baze, Bodhi, Luke, and Han begin to unstrap the pieces of the Falcon off Chewie and Artoo. Chirrut, on the other hand, steps out onto the beach and begins to wiggle his toes. After a moment, “Well, that was disappointing. All this talk about the ocean and it’s just a big blank nothing.”

“Desert people,” Han grouses, sparking four indigant _heys_!

“I can’t even tell where I am,” Chirrut continues, rotating around. Bodhi eagerly steps in to educate. “So that way,” he points East, “The Fire Nation is that way. Mon Cala’s safe though because of its navy and the walls. Then North, there’s Cato Nemodia, then the Northern Air City and other Northern Earth Kingdom states – plains and mountains. Then down in the Southeast, which is uh, that way, you’ve got places like Hays Minor, Dagobah, Nar Kanji, the islands. And then - ”

“You lot don’t have a permit to build your ship here!” An irritated soldier jogs over to them.

Instantly, Chirrut’s face takes on the impression: ‘I’m but a humble blind man’. Gasping theatrically, he rounds on them, “Is that so, grandchildren? Have you deceived this tender old man who only wanted to see the sea?”

“Uhh…” Luke and Bodhi say, while Han’s hand meets his forehead.

Chirrut seizes Baze’s hand. Baze’s face says they’ve done this routine many, _many_ times. “Dear soldier, may I introduce, my husband. Don’t listen to a thing he says, he is, tragically, delusional.”

“Oh, I am, am I?”

“I see, but…” the soldier starts.

“The name’s Bonzu Pippinpaddleopsicopolis the Third,” Chirrut continues, “And my husband, err…”

“Jun Pippinpaddleopsicopolis,” Baze says, without missing a beat. Chirrut beams.

“Um, well, that’s all very well and good…” the soldier says, desperately trying to gain control of the conversation.

“It all began, you see, when my idiot grandchild Han, ignore him, he gets into these fits…”

  
“And she was eaten by crab-bears?” the soldier gasps, dabbing at the tears in his eyes, as Chirrut nods sadly, “That’s so tragic!”

“I’ve forgotten, are we cousins or siblings in this story?” Bodhi whispers into Luke’s ear.

“Wait, I thought we were married?”

“No, you’re married to Han, but then a rampaging elephant-koi attacked the wedding and that’s why you’re taking a break.”

“In that case, I’d rather be married to you.”

“Oh, thanks, I think?” Bodhi says, his ears going pink.

“And it’s done!” Han crows. The Falcon is back, ramshackle and patch-work as ever. The soldier sighs. “Alright, alright, you can leave your boat here. General Ackbar’s always saying we shouldn’t be patrolling the water against refugees coming on boats. Just no trouble!”

Luke performs the sharp slicing motion of Chirrut’s earthbending, bringing his hand from head to chest. The earth shifts, sliding the Falcon into the water. From the grounded stance, Luke moves into the loose lunge of waterbending, dragging up a wave to push the Falcon into deeper waters. Then, his body seems to lighten, as he draws the complex, circular patterns to form an air sphere. The sails catch under the gale. And the Falcon is ready.

“I don’t say it often, but kid, you are really something,” Han says, as Bodhi and Baze gape. “Okay, so you want to sail the Falcon.”

“Yes!” Both Luke and Bodhi say. Bodhi looks embarrassed. “I always wanted to see the ocean when I was in Jedha. The Fire Nation Navy wasn’t really what I had in mind…”

“Well, this old beauty doesn’t operate like any of those ships.”

“Yes, it’s vomit-inducing,” Baze murmurs, “Might want to scrape some of the nooks and crannies.”

“You said you kept it in a bucket!” Han cries, pointing at Chirrut, who is now suspiciously engrossed in looking for seashells. Luke and Bodhi grin at each other, before dragging Han onto the Falcon along with Chewie and Artoo. Soon, the Falcon is bobbing and weaving through the busy harbour, yelling and cheering echoing across the bay. Baze smiles to himself, sitting down next to Chirrut. “They’re happy,” he says softly.

“I’m glad,” Chirrut says, “They’re free out here.”

They watch as another ship, noticing the Falcon’s crazy antics, start up a conversation with their friends. Soon, Bodhi is boarding the other small ship, ready to start racing against Luke. The two boats shoot off. Ducking, weaving, “waterbending is cheating!”, an entire shipment of cabbages gets tossed into the sea, prompting a scream of _my cabbages_! Han leans back on the Falcon, grinning at the chaos they’ve unleashed upon the harbour.

“Go Bodhi! Go Luke!” Chirrut yells. He might not be able to see anything, but he can hear it.

Baze chuckles. He cups his hands around his mouth, “Bodhi, destroy the Avatar’s pasty cheating career!”

“This is bullying, grandfather!”

Eventually, they return to shore, weighing anchor to the Falcon. Luke and Bodhi are excitedly gushing over each other’s skills. “You’re such a good captain!” Bodhi cries. “Hitting womp rats with your sand-sailor my ass!”

“Did you see yourself? You got that boat right between the two _junks_ , that was narrower than anything I’ve ever seen!”

“Excuse me, the Falcon made the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs, so both you rookies are getting ahead of yourselves.”

“What’s a parsec?”

They find, on the harbour, a stall selling a shaved ice dish from the Southeastern islands, thick with pandan grass jelly, palm sugar, and red beans. They sit on the sand and eat, watching the ships carve around each other. Despite the freedom of the ocean, its call, they stay, eating and laughing, as the sun drips into the green-blue sea.

_The Tale of Luke_

Luke has missed the Earth Kingdom. He finds people that he and Aunt Beru have helped, and it is an aching, tender joy. He finds food he has enjoyed from his childhood. Tatooine was not a happy place, but there is beauty in his homeland.

But sometimes he feels so lost without Ben. Destiny is a heavy thing.

Surprisingly, it is Jyn who finds him moping. She says, “Do you miss your family?”

“My family is dead,” Luke says blankly.

Jyn shakes her head. “Come with me. I found this…don’t ask how. I was…out late.”

This is very mysterious, but Luke is curious. They take the monorail into the Middle Tier, cleaned up as best they can. In the centre is some kind of museum. Jyn pays two silver coins, and drags him to a mural. “It is from the Separatist Wars,” she says, “See? Anakin Skywalker.”

And it is. There is also Padme Amidala, Queen of Naboo. A dark-skinned waterbender with long dreadlocks, shirtless and bending powerful water bubbles. He sees more and more figures. Luke takes a step back, and sees. The figures form the rough shape of the Jedi symbol. The battle is probably figurative, but he can’t help but stare. They are fighting with many others in the colourful tiles and paint, and Luke is awestruck. “They aren’t dead,” Jyn says. “Not here, at least.”

“Thank you,” he tells her. He hopes, suddenly, that she finds her father.

Luke looks at his father’s long dirty blond hair, his mother’s determined gaze, and knows that he can do this. He will.

_The Tale of the Twins_

Leia grins as she and Enfys pour over an adventure scroll. “I’ve read the last one, the story was so much better!” Leia insists.

“I think you’re being overly harsh,” Enfys responds, flopping over Leia’s back, “I just want Lelila and Hannie to get together already.”

“It’s a story about people in flying ships in outer space, how good can it be?” Jyn mutters from the floor, trying to sleep. “And Lelila and Hannie are annoying.”

“Wow Jyn, I didn’t know you were paying enough attention to know that,” Leia teases. Jyn makes a rude gesture. Leia almost thinks she is smiling. “It’s my Name Day present to myself anyways. We’ll go to sleep soon, _Mamá_.”

Enfys head shot up. “Name Day? Your birthday is soon?”

“It’s tomorrow.” How odd, how much time has passed. She has not seen her home in months, since the early days of Winter. And now it is fully Spring. She will be twenty, almost an adult in the eyes of her Tribe.

“In that case, there’s no training for you tomorrow. I need to have a wash day soon, anyways,” Enfys says, touching her thick red curls.

“We can’t take a day off training.”

But Enfys insists. At least an afternoon. She and Luke have been neglecting spending time with each other outside of training. They talk and laugh at meal-times, but they haven’t had _fun_ together, Enfys points out. Leia feels guilty. There is a War waging. But she wants to spend time with her brother, all the same.

So they find themselves aboard the Falcon. Luke loves sailing (with Han’s permission), so Leia packs some of her favourite scrolls, a lunch for them both, and gets Threepio to perch on her shoulder as she and Luke ride Artoo to the harbour. The residents of Mon Cala scatter as the huge white polar bear dog bounds through the streets. Soon, they are on Falcon, Artoo and Luke handling the rigging and engine. She and Threepio settle down on deck, as she spreads herself out.

The wind blows the loose strands of her hair as they head out towards the open sea. The Falcon crests over waves, sending up sea spray. Leia smiles as her brother laughs, Artoo yipping excitedly and running around deck. The coast grows into a thin sliver, no thicker than a slice of rice paper. “And to think that’s only one little part of it,” Leia says, standing and leaning her elbows against the lip of the side.

Luke joins her. “That’s supposed to be our homeland.”

Leia frowns. “I think…it could be. Alderaan is my home – but I owe something to this land, don’t I? I have to stand up for them, too.”

Her twin is silent. “I don’t know if I can say the same thing. Even though Mother is Earth Kingdom, my family… we weren’t supposed to be in Tatooine.”

“We can make it right.”

“It’s not your burden to bear.”

Leia shakes her head. “It is my burden. My family is your family, Luke.”

Something clears on his face. They watch where the earth meets the gentle embrace of the sea.

They reached out with their senses, further and further, shifting their seismic senses outwards. Deeper. Carving through the layers of Mon Cala, into something older, older than the Four Nations, older than bending, older than the Avatar.

_Two lovers, in red and blue, meet. Their villages are enemies, so they cannot be together. But their love is strong. They built elaborate tunnels to meet, within caves of glittering kyber crystals._

It's an old song.

_But one day the man did not come. He had perished in the War between their two villages._

And that is how it ends. That's just how it goes, the storyteller says. This story has happened many, many times before. Sometimes they are both doomed. Sometimes the man chooses selfish love over her. Sometimes she dies in his arms, sometimes he looks back, sometimes they die and their families at last understand, sometimes they come _so close_ \- sometimes, he lies in a river of lava and burns, screaming of her betrayal of his new world - 

_The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it is kind._

The song was written long ago. And that is how it goes, how it has been told, over and over. But the stones sang the song, anyways, vibrating beneath their feet, down and down and down...into Mon Cala's kyber heart, lying deep beneath its rock. 

That's the thing about stories. To know how the story ends, and still begin to sing it again, as if this time, this time around, the world could be...

_A woman in red meets a man in blue on a frozen tundra, sending fire cartwheeling across the ice. Their nations are at War, so they cannot be together._

Spring had come to Mon Cala. And the song echoed across its stones, a love song from long ago. A song that wished, as two people ran through the darkness, searching for each other, that they could fix what was broken and make the world whole, bring the world into something new -

_And somewhere, the woman's father builds a star with a heart of kyber, and the man kills, and heals, and the woman becomes lost in the labyrinth..._

It's a sad song, the stones whispered. This old tale from way back when, older than everything you have ever known. It's a love song, and those are the best kind.

_I will give you something more powerful than death or duty, stronger than rage or passion. I give you the key to hold the darkness back._

The story always ends the same way. But the stones keep singing, even so. As if this time...

_Rebellions are built on hope, the man tells her._

The flowers are blooming.

_The Tale of the Two Lovers_

Cassian spreads his papers, massaging his temples. So far, they are no closer to getting into the Earth King’s Palace. He slumps over the low desk, given the house is empty.

“You’ll get a cramp in your neck like that.”

Jyn is standing in the doorway. She crosses the room and sits opposite. “Don’t you have work?”

“It’s my day off,” she says, as though it explains why she has sought him out. Their mornings are quiet, precious things, but he has missed today in his frustration.

In the silence, as he stares at his maps, he hears a crackling noise. Jyn bends little fingers of flame in her palms, sliding them from one hand to another. It’s an idle movement. Jyn’s fire has always been something to be feared, but there is something warm, nostalgic in this.

Jyn looks up, meets his eyes, and spreads her arms. The fire weaves and coils slowly through the air, like a beautiful serpent. It dances away from her, like a living, breathing thing. She is smiling. “Touch it,” she says.

He remembers the cruel pain when Luke and Leia had burnt his hands. Cassian looks into Jyn’s eyes. Slowly, he reaches out as though to stroke the serpent.

Nothing.

Cassian turns his palms over. No smoke, no fire. “Clever trick.”

Jyn laughs. He feels pleased with himself. “It’s a carnival trick. When…when I was little, I went to a festival, and there was a man making a dancing serpent. I spent months trying to do it.”

“It looks like waterbending,” Cassian said, smiling a little, “The movements.”

Jyn looks intrigued. “Bodhi said something like that to me, about adapting other styles to firebending. I wish I’d paid better attention when I was trained.”

Cassian pulls a face. “I was an impatient learner too, and not much to show for it.” Brightening, “I wonder if it would go the other way as well. Fire to water.”

They turn their faces to each other thoughtfully. Jyn’s face falls. “We can’t spar though. If someone sees.”

He sighs, turning back to his work. “I’m too busy, anyways.”

Her hands slam onto the desk. “You’re just staring at your papers.”

“I am not -”

“Cassian, I’ve been here all day. You’re not doing anything.”

“They -”

“They can feed and clothe and be trusted not to do anything stupid and I didn’t see you eat,” Jyn says. She takes his hand in hers, “One day, come on, Cassian Andor?”

And she says, “I made dinner for them. They’ll be alright.”

He lets her lead him out of the house, apprehensive.

  
The place Jyn brings him to is loud and bustling and full of life, and some of his apprehension fades. It is not necessarily a happy place – the Lower Tier is always hungry – but he likes it, all the same. They order, and he laughs at how red her face gets at the spice, firebender or no. “Oh, and you like eating ice?” she huffs.

There is a Dejarik board at the side of their table. They glance over at it and then at each other. “Are you competitive?” Jyn asks.

“No.”

  
“So not only are you a liar, but you’re a cheater, too! You can’t move diagonally!”

“I am _not_ competitive, and yes, you can. It’s in the rules.”

“You’re lying because you’re losing!”

“I’m winning.”

“ _I’m_ winning.”

They stop and stare at the board. Jyn folds her arms. “Let’s just say that the rules are different in the Fi – my hometown.”

Cassian flips the Jedi tile absently between his fingers. “Fine. We'll compromise. The animal tiles go on the white squares, then.”

“Do they?”

“We can say they do,” Cassian says. Jyn tries to frown, but he sees the corners of her lips are twitching.

“Fine, but then no moving diagonally unless you have Grimtaash.”

“Okay…”

“And you can do anything if you have the mannok tile.”

“Unless you have the Jedi tile to counter,” Cassian says, getting into the spirit, setting his Jedi tile down next to Jyn’s mannok.

“Oh, but look at that! It doesn’t work if you’re wearing blue.”

“We should probably write these rules down.”

Jyn is grinning as she passes him the mannok tile he won. For a brief moment, he fears that someone has heard her slip. But when her fingers graze his palm, he cannot help but return her smile. He pockets it.

  
As the game continues, and the sun begins to dip, Jyn can’t help but shiver. Though she’s lived in exile for five years, her body is best suited for the heat of the Fire Nation. Not to mention, as a firebender, the cold weakens her abilities. Cassian shrugs his jacket off – as a waterbender and native-born Water Tribe, she guesses he thinks it’s too hot here – and hands it over without even asking.

She can’t help but feel strange seeing Cassian without it on. Of course, she knew that Cassian must be fit – he’s one of the most talented and powerful benders she’s ever seen. It’s different seeing it, his well-muscled arms marred by scars before he learnt to heal. His bicep flexes as he re-sets the board for their next game.

Stupid. _Stupid_.

Scowling, angry mostly at her own self and too-dry mouth, she snatches the leather jacket, slipping it on over her blouse. It’s thick, dyed a nice dark blue. There’s fur sewn to the shoulders, white browned by time. Something digs into her forearm. It’s a dagger, strapped to a holder inside. There is careful sewing on the elbows where he’s worn through. A burn mark along the ribs. Thinning fabric on the shoulder where his water-skin always hangs across his back.

And the embroidery across the cuffs and down the front.

“I did those,” he says, noticing her scrutiny. When she looks unconvinced, he continues, “Everyone in the Tribe has some labour they do. My parents were craftspeople – they made and decorated clothes.”

There is everything in what he doesn’t say. “It’s beautiful.”

He shrugs. “It’s mediocre by our standards.” He affects a voice. “Really, Cassian? Moons and waves? The Water Tribe sigil? Bit on the nose there. What’s next, embroidering snow? Might as well write ‘I’m From the Water Tribe’ down the front.”

“The blue also gives it away.”

“It’s my colour,” he says, and she swears he’s messing with her. “It’s calming to do. Gives your hands something to focus on.”

“I understand.” He glances up at her from the board. Feeling hot, Jyn quickly moves on, “Your parents were very talented, then?”

Cassian nods. “They used to trade textiles with Earth Kingdom ships…when we still had traders. My mother once was given a lantern, from Cato Nemoidia. The trader said she was so skilled she could have it for free.”

“Must’ve been some lantern.”

“It was beautiful. A white rabbit made of glass – they believe the Moon Spirit has a pet,” he laughs. Jyn doesn’t think she has ever seen Cassian laughs. He throws his whole body into it, his arms coming around and his shoulders hunching. Jyn flushes, just watching him. Cassian is not an unattractive man, in all ways.

“Do you still have it?”

“No,” he says, sobering, “It was lost when my home was destroyed.”

“Wait,” Jyn says, frowning, “But…but you’re from Alderaan. I saw it, right there, when I -”

 _Invaded_ , hangs in the air between them.

“I am, in a way,” Cassian says carefully, “Alderaan is our main settlement. When our population became too big for it, we established settlements in the surrounding glaciers. I was from one. Fest. It was burnt in the early years of the War.”

They are quiet as they continue to play, bickering now and then over the placement of a tile. His words turn in her mind.

The Water Tribes have nothing to offer the Fire Lord – no resources, no minerals, no kyber. If there is, it is buried deep beneath the ice, and no amount is worth the effort. Their population is small, numbering only a few thousands. They are no threat to the Fire Nation.

Why, she thinks, _why_ –

Her father taught her a word, once. _Genos_ , people, he told her, _caedo_ , the act of killing. _Genocide_.

She touches the embroidery on this jacket Cassian lends her. It is, she realises, a cultural treasure. The people who could make such beauty are dead. Their knowledge is lost, forever. She imagines songs only a few people knew, ways of hunting and speaking, waterbenders, like Cassian – he is the last one, the only one, there is no more Southern-style waterbending and there never, _never_ will be –

“Jyn?”

She looks up at him, this man who is his people’s treasure. “Hmm?”

“You have Grimtaash.”

“Right,” she says, picking up the tile. She pushes the thought down as she sees Cassian’s smile. Foolish. “Best eleven out of twenty.”

  
After they are removed from the restaurant for disrupting the peace, they walk amiably through Mon Cala. It is late afternoon, on a cool spring day, and the sky looks damp but not uninviting. What’s something you like doing? Jyn asks him. Sparring, he tells her, or weaving, like my Mamá and Papá did. But they can’t do that right now, so he asks her.

Jyn thinks for a long time. “I like games,” she says at last, “And I like adventures.”

So they play games of Elements, and whoever wins gets to pick the next path in Mon Cala’s labyrinth streets. Jyn is very, very good at Elements. “One day I’ll tell you the secret,” she says, and Cassian pretends she can keep that promise.

They thread through the streets, talking as the sunlight burns lower and lower, buying snacks with Jyn’s waitress tips. Once he gets annoyed at her constant winning (though he likes the warm weight of her hand on his wrist when she goes “here, this way!”), he suggests another game.

“Well, there’s always Hide and Explode.”

Jyn looks like a croco-cat that’s got its cream. Cassian’s eyes narrow. “It’s a firebending game, isn’t it.”

“Maybe,” she says, and takes off running. Cursing, Cassian chases after her. What a thought, this woman who had followed them around the world. She disappears for a moment, until he reaches a grassy bank near the Wall.

It is raining. Cassian turns his face towards the sky. He knows Leia loves thunderstorms – he was the one who showed Leia her first, in those scant handful that touch the South Pole. The water drenches his face.

“Cassian!”

Jyn is sitting, cramped, under an abandoned lean-to. “Get out of the rain!”

He bends and the water curves around him. “I can stop it.”

“There’s lightning,” and he hears fear in her voice.

“The shield will stop it.”

“You can’t stop lightning dead-on,” Jyn insists. Something shadowy is taking shape in his mind, on her scars, on the white brightness of the lightning, white as Fest’s snow. He walks through the grass and squeezes in next to her. “So, what now?”

“You’re supposed to shoot fire out to shock your opponent and run away,” Jyn says. He nods. “Here,” she says, taking his wrist. With her other hand, she bends those same fiery fingers from earlier. “Careful,” she says, when he leans towards their warmth, but Cassian is not afraid.

“You won.”

The rain has stuck her dark hair to her forehead and neck. Droplets have caught in the eyelashes of her green eyes. Her body radiates heat. Cassian can trace the line of her sharp nose, her lips, her jawline, her collarbones, disappearing into her green blouse. Jyn lets go, turning away.

They sit in the comfortable silence, listening to the drip of water on wooden roofs. At this time of day, the others would be filtering in. There will be Luke’s chattering, Baze and Leia’s sarcastic remarks, Han's grumbling, Chirrut's sage wisdom, Enfys’ quiet laughter. And now Bodhi’s lame jokes and Jyn’s presence.

She is not bad company, at all.

Eventually the clouds part, and they can walk back in the deepening twilight. They argue over the stars they are able to see. “That’s the Great Bear,” Jyn says firmly.

“Alright, so maybe I’m not as good at reading the Northern Sky,” he admits.

“Can you tell what that one is?”

“ _Funny_. The Moon.”

“And that one?”

“A wandering star. The Great Star, for Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent of the Wind.”

In the dim light, it looks for a second like Jyn is blushing, but he can’t figure out why.

  
When they reach the house, the sheer amount of noise that greets them shocks Cassian for a second. Spirits, he always misses this. “CASSIAN!”

“Where’ve you been?” Leia asks.

“Out, with Jyn.”

“Oh, okay. Hurry up and join us for dinner!”

“I’m full,” he says, thinking of their glut of snacks, exchanging a look with Jyn.

She brightens. “We can’t spar with elements, but I can show you how to use tonfas.”

The smooth polished wood is very different from his daggers, or a spear. It can’t be that difficult, though. Same principle, probably.

“You’re holding them wrong.”

From the house, he hears Han exclaiming, “Who cooked dinner? This tastes _awful_!”

He nods at her to explain. “So, if you want to attack, you’d have the long end extended past your hand -” She rotates her wrists, so that the longer end points outwards, but Cassian doesn’t quite understand. “Like this.”

Her left hand reaches up onto his shoulder. Her right hand takes his hand, adjusting his grip so the tonfa spins. Her fingers spread out over his larger hand. He feels the flush of her body against his back. She must be on her tip-toes in order to see over his shoulder. 

“And you’d swing like this,” she says, bringing his hand in slice, then letting go. Cassian feels as though the heat of her pale hands is sending sparks running across his tan skin. He turns and looks back at her.

“Show me again.”

Even though he got it the first time.

  
Baze rubbed Chirrut’s back as the lesson ended. The day was late. Chirrut settled down on the lip of the fountain, feeling the balmly spring air. Always sensing his mood, Baze joined him. “It’s been one month,” Baze said very gently. One month since Jedha had fallen. The grief was so great for Chirrut, and Baze could only hold him, masking his own pain.

Together, they walked into the house.

Laid out on the table were all the dishes of Jedha. He saw a cookbook on the table, their limited funds well-spent. The group smiled, extending their hands.

From a bag, Bodhi produced the greatest gift: a small kyber shrine, built in the Jedha style. How impossible it must have been to find.

Baze’s heart melted and broke at once. He clasped Chirrut’s hand, and at last, allowed himself to grieve.

It's an old story, and stories have weight.

_When was the last time you saw your father..._

_._

_._

_._

_?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your honour, they are a family, and also, Jyn and Cassian are in love and nothing bad happens ever again from this point...
> 
> 1) Chirrut and Baze's fake names come from ATLA Season 1 Episode 5.
> 
> 2) The song Chirrut sings to Enfys is from the Ivory Coast (where I think, based off her insta, Erin Kellyman's family is from).


	27. Book Two: Empire XIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in the endgame of Book Two! Ever watch a little indie film called The Empire Strikes back? Cool ending huh, with everyone sad...
> 
> Also I think I can't count because there are fifteen chapters in Book Two, not fourteen rip

She is standing in the green field of Lah’mu. She can smell the grass, the salt of the sea and volcanic soil. A long black robe covers her, trailing as her bare feet leave imprints in the dirt. There is something wrong about her face. It feels soft, loose, the skin dripping off. In the sunlit field, Cassian is gathering the harvest.

A white snake slithers across the soil. Its sinuous body spirals over her body towards her face. It speaks with Krennic’s voice. “They say that belonging is the essence of humanity. Are you tired, yet?”

“I’m not tired.”

The snake’s face pauses inches from hers. “Just relax. Give into it. Shut your eyes for a while.”

Her eyelids feel heavy. What a tempting, reasonable offer.

“No, Jyn!” A black feathered serpent curls towards her, speaking with Bodhi’s voice. “Don’t listen!”

Cassian seizes her hands. “The stars are fire,” he tells her.

“What does that mean?”

“The stars are fire,” he repeats. She looks up. A red star bleeds across the sky and the field burns. It is her. The flames spread out from beneath her feet, and Cassian and the black dragon with Bodhi’s voice draw away. She sees the others in the field, watches as they ignite. Luke and Leia blow like ash in the wind. “Did you think we would appreciate this?”

In the white snake’s eyes, she sees her own are yellow. “Sleep… like Lyra.”

Jyn extends her hand. The white snake sinks its teeth into her scarred skin.

  
Jyn awoke, gasping. Her body was sticky with sweat. The other women slept on. For a moment, she lay and stared at the ceiling. Lyra had spoken often on the nature of dreams, of the ways in which the Spirits could touch you, or you to touch their world, if your mind was open enough. Jyn was more concerned about her brain falling out of her head by being that open. Wiping her body down, she watched Leia and Enfys twitch in their sleep. They had let her sleep beside them for so many weeks now. Her fingertips traced her face. Her temples were pounding. She felt feverish. Yellow eyes…

She stood in front of the mirror for a long time.

When she stepped into the kitchen, Cassian was there, as always. “I want to go to a temple,” she said abruptly, “Can you…”

Only tilting his head at her rudeness, he got to his feet, pocketing a few oranges. Together they started out on the already bustling streets. There were many roadside shrines, as there were in the Fire Nation and across the Earth Kingdom. Jyn was looking for something larger. Cassian peeled an orange, handing her a slice. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a temple,” he said, as she chewed, “We just have a communal shrine in the South Pole.”

Jyn nodded. “Bodhi told me once, because we were always on the water, that a temple is just a sacred place. It's just about how you look at it. I guess he missed Jedha, a lot, then.”

In answer, he handed her another orange slice. His fingers were sticky with juice. This too, is sacred, breakable. “What temple are you looking for? There are temples and shrines in Mon Cala for all Four Nations. Though the Fire Nation ones are probably in disrepair.”

“Coruscant, too.” Jyn frowned. “I remember there was an abandoned Water Tribe shrine, near the harbour. My mother took me there once, when I was very young. She was really interested in other cultures. We didn’t ask permission, I mean, there weren't any attendants anyways,” she added hurriedly, “But we didn't touch anything or pray to the Spirits. Anyways, no Fire Nation Shrines. That would...be dangerous.”

Cassian began to lead them onto another path. “I wouldn't have been upset if you had prayed to the Water Tribe Spirits.”

“They're your Spirits, Cassian, they aren't for my people.”

“Spirits aren't _for_ anyone, they belong to themselves and nature. We just chose them.”

“Well, I don't think they believe in _me_.”

“Not even after the North Pole?”

Jyn made a face. Perhaps, in Cassian’s eyes, the rampage of the Ocean Spirit was some kind of blessing upon his sister tribe. _Trust the Spirits._ The Ocean Spirit had spared her and Bodhi. _The world isn't done with you yet,_ they seemed to say. Cassian gave her a nudge. They had arrived at an Earth Kingdom temple. She looked up at him and smiled. A middle ground.

Even if XoXaan had tried to eat her.

Despite the early hour, the temple was already swarmed with people. A queue had formed to go inside. Hawkers, street charlatans, and fortunetellers were camped out, plying their wares or calling out to cut hair, make tea, and all other manner of services. In the queue, Jyn spotted a familiar head, who had sensed them as well.

“J- Lynna! Cassian!” Chirrut called, waving an arm. Nearly every head swivelled around to look at them. Cassian looked so utterly embarrassed that she couldn’t help the bark of laughter that escaped. An annoyed looking monk stalked towards them. Cassian instantly melted into the crowd to join Chirrut.

"Madam, do you know -"

Jyn was left to apologize to the fuming monk, before she found the two culprits.

“You two assholes got me into trouble!” she cried, folding her arms and glaring at them.

Cassian laughed. “That was Chirrut’s fault.”

There’s a sly look on Chirrut’s face. “Sometimes the greatest feelings spawn in the face of pressure,” he said sagely. Jyn shoved him. He gave a mock gasp. "Assaulting a defenseless blind man?"

He then earthbent a little bit of stone to trip her. "Defenseless, my ass," Jyn groused, nearly falling directly on Cassian, but she called it a draw.

The queue inched forward. A fortune-teller, carrying a stack of wooden tiles, was walking down the line. A green iguana-parrot sat on his shoulder. Jyn hated fortune-tellers. Sometimes, at the ports they'd docked at, Bodhi would drag her over to one. “All in good fun!” he had insisted. He wasn’t the one getting a fortune about ‘radiating negativity’. Before she could stop him, Chirrut said, “Oh, let’s get our fortunes read!”

Beside her, Cassian groaned. She could have sworn she heard him mutter, “It better not be about my love life again.” But when she made eye contact with him, his gaze seemed to quickly slide over to the fortune-teller. Silly.

“For you three? No charge,” the fortune-teller said. “You seem people with interesting stories.”

He set the stack down. The parrot jumped onto the ground as the man said something to him. Chittering to itself, the parrot pecked at the tiles. From the stack of twenty-seven tiles, the parrot selected one. It handed the tile to the fortune-teller. He turned it over and presented it to Chirrut. The tile was elaborately painted, though the image was slightly worn. A woman sat, four-armed, holding lotuses in her hands.

“The Mother,” the fortune-teller said approvingly, “A very good fortune. You have the blessings of the Spirits. Do not worry, like a fish caught in a net. Soon, you shall achieve the balance you require.”

“Ah,” Chirrut said. There was a curious expression on his face.

Cassian was next. The woman on his tile was green, with large, bulbous eyes, while water poured down around her. “The Fish-Eyed Woman,” he hummed, “For you, I think a bad omen. He who sees clearly all others, yet not himself. Someone has set the shark in movement, but now the netting is cast by your own hand. Betrayal is on the horizon, but it will not help.”

Cassian had gone stiff. One word echoed in Jyn’s mind – _betrayal_ – perhaps it meant Aphra, who had abandoned them beneath the sand. But the man had used the future tense in Basic, _it will_ , so who was the next who would hurt Cassian?

“If the shark stops moving, it will die,” Cassian said, his voice sharp. He had snatched the tile from the man and was staring at it.

“Only death leads to rebirth, ocean-man,” the fortune-teller said cryptically. He gestured towards her. “You last, girl.”

She bristled at the condescending ‘girl’. Annoyed, Jyn thrust out her hand to receive her tile. When the parrot selected the tile, the fortune-teller looked at her with clear, dark eyes. He turned it over to reveal a blue-skinned man. A serpent coiled around his neck. On his forehead was a third eye. “The Destroyer, the Transformer. A good omen, if one overcomes to transform into new.”

“But for me?” Jyn said through her teeth.

“Your life has not been easy, has it? A girl looks back, lost and confused, nostalgic for the past. A king who has nothing, a king who has everything.”

 _King?_ That wasn't a unisex term, so who...? The fortune-teller traced the serpent. “There is an old song, told over and over, of the two lovers, finding each other in the darkness.”

“The Cave of the Two Lovers,” Chirrut said excitedly.

“That’s one. I know a version, where the man dooms himself because he doubts.”

Jyn knew the song. It was an old Fire Nation story, and she knew the fortune-teller knew it too. “Do you know why he doubts, and turns back?” the man asked her.

“Why?”

“Because he chooses the memory,” the fortune-teller told her.

  
It turned out that you needed to give an offering of flowers or sweets to the temple statue, to be permitted prayer. She saw others with sweets, fruits, someone even had a box of rolled cigarettes. Chirrut had already purchased a large bouquet of brightly coloured flowers. For Chirrut's purposes, they seemed almost too vibrant. “I have my shrine,” he explained, swallowing for a moment, “But it cannot replace being surrounded by others. When the ghosts are loud.”

She glanced over at the sellers. Jyn deflated, as she groped in her vest and trousers. Cassian rummaged in his own pockets, producing a single gold coin, and small pile of copper coins. “Wait here.”

“No, I can’t…” The money was better saved for wherever the group would go next (and what _now_ , Jyn Erso?).

“It’s fine,” Cassian said. “I’ll get…”

“A flower and a sweet,” Jyn said. Then, “Two sweets. With nuts, if you can.”

Cassian disappeared into the crowd. Chirrut told her the names of the people he was remembering, other Guardians and friends whose roots stretched to the same brown-skinned folk of Mon Cala and Jedha and Sriluur. “You remember each one?"

"I think you know as well as I do, forgetting is not easy. There may be no such thing as ghosts, but they exist, all the same."

Jyn squeezed his hand tightly. "What if they survived? What if you're praying to someone still living - who feels gone?”

“Then, it's just in case,” Chirrut said meaningfully.

Quickly, Jyn changed the subject. “Do you believe in fortune-tellers?”

“I always get good fortunes,” Chirrut said easily. Something unreadable crossed his face. “Even after Jedha fell. Baze says it means the Spirits have never cared one ingot for anyone’s destiny.”

The thought saddened Chirrut, but it made Jyn selfishly relieved. _Betrayal_ – it was all nonsense. These people loved Cassian so dearly; she could never imagine them harming him. Another person, maybe, but the Spirits weren't part of this. Nonsense. She saw Cassian returning, and her heart made a strange little shiver. Nonsense.

“We should have saved that,” she said, though there was no reproach. Her mother would have loved to be here.

They shucked off their shoes and placed them neatly in a designated area. The inner sanctum of the temple was where the statue of this Spirit was placed. The beginning of the universe, Chirrut called it. As they approached, Jyn saw it was a rendition of the Mother tile that Chirrut had drawn. The statue was of a giant owl, with eight faces, sitting atop a lotus flower.

It matched the one Cassian had purchased for her. For Lyra. The most beautiful person in Jyn's life. Cassian handed her two sweets, dense confections that smelt of milk, sugar, flour, and almonds. Something two people who'd loved her enjoyed. One for Saw. And one for Galen.

Just in case.

She couldn't meet Cassian's eyes when she saw his offerings. Two lotuses flowers, two sugary fried flour sweets in the shape of flowers, perfect for children. His parents, and his siblings. And another flower, soft and white, for someone else he had lost. "The old man at the Spirit Oasis," he said quietly, "Obi Wan. He died for our people."

So there was one Fire Nation person Cassian viewed so highly. They laid down their offerings at the Spirit’s feet and prayed. Jyn's mind was blank. With Saw and Galen, everything felt too much like picking at a wound that had never healed. Her mother knew how much she loved and missed her, but she had never achieved peace. Where did those offerings go? Did they disappear into the aether, roaming somewhere the Spirits who never passed on went? Jyn clasped her hands together, searching.

Someone was yelling at the front of the temple.

“Listen, I’m sorry, excuse me,” it was Baze, bursting into the temple, “Cassian, you need to come. They’re about to do something stupid.”

“And _what_ is that?”

Baze dropped his voice so the irate monk couldn’t hear. “Storming the Palace.”

  
"They’ve had us waiting for too long!” Luke was insisting. Jyn discreetly ate some dried figs as she listened. Cassian groaned under his breath.

“I agree with Luke,” Leia said, ignoring Cassian, “We’re running out of time - it's already the fifth month! We have us, a master waterbender, master airbender, master earthbender, explosives expert, Han and Bodhi. And…a master firebender.”

Jyn started choking on a fig. “Excuse me? You want me to storm the Palace and start _firebending_? Are you trying to get me killed?”

Leia said, “We’ll protect you.”

 _The essence of humanity is belonging_ , the white serpent whispered. Jyn shivered. She clipped her tonfas to her belt as Cassian reluctantly agreed with the plan.

  
Leia had never felt this powerful before. These people, her friends, together they were a force to be reckoned with. Water, Earth, Fire, and Air worked in perfect seamless form: Cassian, arcing over the Palace moat and sweeping the soldiers in, Chirrut flattening the grand staircase to send guards tumbling, Enfys blowing back the hordes, Jyn shattering rocks with her tonfas. Leia wasn't going to push her to firebend. Baze, Han, and Bodhi helped out with fists and explosives. And her and Luke, bridging their gaps. Even the animals were helping out, bowling over soldiers (well, Threepio was more of just screaming, but he was _there_ ). This was what the War was trying to destroy.

Domesticated red panda-peacocks enjoying the fountains and water gardens scattered in terror as they crashed through the grounds. Breaking down the Palace doors, they raced inside. “Chirrut, where’s the throne room?”

“How would I know, I’ve never been here before!”

“Look for fancy doors,” Jyn said under her breath.

“They’re all fancy!” Han cried.

Enfys glided on ahead. They heard her yelling. “I think it’s this!”

Skidding around the corner, they found a massive set of carved wooden doors. “That’ll do it,” Baze said.

With a great gust of wind, they threw the doors open. There, on the divans, was the Earth King Lee-Char. He was old, much older than Leia had expected, with brown skin and carefully trimmed white hair. There was a yellow undertone to his skin that spoke of a growing sickness. Still, he cut a regal figure in a crisp blue shirt, trousers, and embroidered vest. A bejewelled turban sat upon his head. Surrounding him were his Five Generals. One, brown skinned, with red undertones, and slightly bulbous eyes, peered at them with keen interest.

"What is the meaning of this?" the Earth King cried, setting down the papers he was holding.

“We need to speak with you,” Leia said, stepping forward alongside Luke. Her brother continued, “We’re the Avatar, and we have very important information for the War.”

Lee-Char rose. Though sickly and frail, he cut an imposing figure. “You invade my palace, lay waste to all my guards, break down my fancy door – and you expect me to listen to you?”

“They speak the truth.” Thrawn stepped out from the shadows of the curtains around the throne. “I myself met them, your Majesty, though you dismissed my concerns.”

“Did I?” the old King pressed his hands to his head, looking weary for a moment.“Mon Cala does not have the time to spend on this! Every day we push the Fire Nation hordes coming down and throwing themselves against our walls, or send troops out to the furthest regions. We are stretched thin, boy. And girl. What information could you possibly have to give?”

Thrawn bowed. “Of course, your Majesty. I apologize, Avatar, but you must -”

“If I may, your Majesty,” the bulbous eyed general piped up. Thrawn's red eyes flickered over. “I think we ought to hear what they have to say.”

Lee-Char sat back down. “I trust your judgment, Ackbar. Speak.”

This was General Ackbar? Leia’s opinion warmed immediately. It seemed, no matter where they turned, the General was helping them on their way. Squaring her shoulders, she began to speak. “I understand we are playing a war of attrition, your Majesty. That's why we came all this way to Mon Cala. We need the might of your armies in order to deliver a devastating strike against the Fire Nation.

"My friend,” she gestured to Bodhi, who stepped forward, “Uncovered documents revealing the Fire Nation’s secret plans. At the end of summer, the comet Plaguies will return and grant their firebenders unbelievable power. The Fire Nation plans to harness this power using a superweapon to end the War.”

“But, but," Bodhi squared his shoulders. Though short, he seemed to grow to fill the space, "What I mean to say is: There is hope. Before the comet comes, we have a window of opportunity. A solar eclipse. In those eight minutes, on the first day of the eighth month, the firebenders will be helpless.”

“That’s the day we must invade the Fire Nation,” Luke said, “The Day of Black Sun.”

“And what is your proof?”

Cassian produced the document from the library. Lee-Char glanced at it, though his expression didn't change.

Leia put her hand on the small of Jyn’s back, trying to give her strength. Jyn cleared her throat uncertainly. “Your Majesty, my father is the head of the Fire Nation’s Weapons Development. He addressed a letter to me. Inside it, he talked about the superweapon and the Fire Lord’s plan to use it. In private, I could speak more…”

The Earth King leant back. His expression grew closed. In an hard voice, he said, “Long has Mon Cala been involved in fighting tyranny. But I cannot risk the safety of a million people over the words, of the daughter of _a Fire Nation official_.” He rubbed his chin. “This solar eclipse, though. I will discuss it further with my Generals and ministers, when we have finished. You are dismissed.”

"And when can you give us an answer?" Leia and Luke both demanded.

"When I have one," the King snapped, "You are not the only one anxious to end this War! Now, out!"

The last thing Leia saw as they walked away, were the red-eyes of Thrawn as he whispered in the ear of the Earth King.

  
“Wait!”

Jyn, who had been trailing after the group as they left the Palace, turned. So, this was it, then. She had done as she had promised. It was over. And now what?

General Ackbar caught up with them breathlessly. “Please, come with me. _Please,_ ” he emphasized. Luke touched his sister's shoulder. He nodded, his gaze sure. Pursing her lips, Leia made a noise of agreement.

They followed Ackbar to an office jam-packed with scrolls. “We can speak freely here. First, I believe you,” Ackbar said, hurriedly, taking in their expressions. It was a small consolation. “From my communication with numerous rebel agents, including your esteemed parents, Avatar Leia, all sources confirm the Fire Nation is building a weapon.”

“I was the one who found that information,” Cassian said slowly, “But your King, he's not easily convinced by rumours. Why are you?”

“Because I know where their newest Weapons Facility is – and that is where we will find the proof.”

Jyn glanced up sharply.

Ackbar produced a locked box. He also drew out a map, pointing towards a mountain range in the Northern Earth Kingdom. “That's Northern Air Nomad territory. There are sightings of Fire Nation ships stopping by this river. From there, we think the cliffs of Eadu are their destination.”

Her father. She met Cassian’s eyes, but his father betrayed nothing. Betray - she pushed the thought from her mind. Cassian was too important to the Rebellion for them to hurt him. “If the Earth King needs proof, we need to get Galen Erso,” Leia said.

The words sank like a stone in her stomach. Papa. Her North Star, her sun. And what now?

"His Majesty has seen War before during the Separatist conflicts," Ackbar said apologetically, "He is...unimpressed by powerful people coming in and claiming to know what they're saying. Moving on, we have also found that communication to you was being intercepted."

The group grew serious. “By who?” Cassian said.

“I don’t know. I have my suspicions of who the spies work for…”

“Thrawn,” Chirrut said.

Ackbar’s expression grew grave. “So, you mislike him as well? I won't throw accusations around, but Thrawn is an enigma. He is efficient, hard-working, polite, cultured, has integrated well, ever since he came to this city many years ago,” he said, “And yet…there is something not _right_ about his rags-to-riches tale. His rise to power was marked by suspicious incidents, though no blame can be traced."

He looked at them grimly. “Something is swelling in Mon Cala, as the walls go up and the charisma of the Cultural Secretariat draws more and more to him. For now, you must make this move, while I seek out the rot. Here, this letter is for Cassian Andor.”

Cassian took the letter but did not read it, pocketing it. “For Luke and Leia," Ackbar continued.

Leia took the scroll and unrolled it so she and Luke could read. “It’s from Yoda! Asking us to come to Dagobah,” Luke said, “We completely forgot with everything going on. We have to find him!”

“He says he can teach us how to control the Avatar State.” Leia tilted the message. “Uh, I think. He writes…weird.”

“And finally, an intelligence report that I believe will interest Enfys.”

Enfys unclipped her helmet. Then she took the scroll and began to read. Her brow furrowed. “It’s about the Cloudriders… things aren’t going well in Savareen.”

Luke and Leia wrapped an arm around her, as she fought to keep an even face. Jyn nearly reached out to touch her, but withdrew, sensing Enfys didn't want to appear weak in front of outsiders.

"We'll need to leave for Eadu immediately," Cassian said, "And without Thrawn knowing."

“I have just the distraction,” Ackbar said, “There are some Mandalorians visiting. I believe there was a Captain Rex in the group?”

“We know Rex,” Luke said, "He's a good man. Send our well-wishes on to him, please."

Ackbar nodded. “I’m glad to hear they are trustworthy, given Mandalore's occupation. Good luck, young Avatar, and may the Spirits be with you.”

  
They returned to the house, looking over the letters. “So, which do we do first?” Luke asked. Jyn chewed on her lip, pacing back and forth like a hunted animal behind the little gathering. Bodhi glanced over at her, raising his eyebrows. Jyn folded her arms, giving him a meaningful look.

“I think we have to split up,” Cassian said. “You and Leia _need_ to control the Avatar State if we are going to win the War. I’ll go to Eadu.”

“I can take them,” Han said, “Dagobah's near Bespin, and I know a guy there.”

Soon, Bodhi, Baze, and Chirrut had agreed to go with Cassian to Eadu. “We will go for the little sister," Baze declared.

Enfys, who had been quiet, spoke up. “I…I’m going to be leaving.”

“What?” Luke said, voice breaking. Oh, love, Jyn thought.

“I… I need to go back to the Cloudriders. I have to make sure they're safe! In Bespin, the Eastern Air City, there are so many powerful airbenders. You will be able to find a teacher to complete your training. You’ve already come so far,” she said, her eyes watery. Enfys dropped her gaze. Leia said nothing, but her poise had left her.

“But… it’s supposed to be _you_. It was always supposed to be you,” Luke whispered.

Even softer, “I knew you before I met you.”

Enfys covered her mouth with a shaking hand, curling her fingers in her tunic.

“Let her go,” Jyn said, before she could stop herself, “It can be such a difficult thing to choose between your family, and…”

Enfys threw her arms around Jyn’s neck and began to sob, cutting her off. Awkwardly, Jyn patted her on the back. After a moment, the others piled on. Jyn grunted, but held still. Honestly, these people. “We aren’t going to stop you,” Luke breathed, “But we, Leia, _I’m_ going to miss you.”

The airbender pulled back, wiping her eyes. “We’ll meet again. Win this War, and I will find you.”

"Promise," Luke and Leia said, as though it were something they could keep.

  
The next morning, Jyn sat in the emptied room that had held her, Leia, and Enfys. The small pack Enfys carried, with only a few possessions, was gone. Leia's things were similarly gone, stored in the Falcon, leaving behind only the room's original objects. There was no evidence a time before this had existed. She stared at the mirror mounted to the wall. Green eyes, pale skin that had weathered under the sun and seas. No yellow eyes.

Someone came in behind her. “Jyn?” Bodhi asked. “Jyn, are you…”

“I don’t know,” Jyn whispered. She picked at Maia’s beautiful blouse, unravelling a delicate deep green thread. It had been five years. In her mind, she saw the white and black serpents crawling over her feet. _Just in case._ A terrible feeling swam over her then, as though she were walking into the very heart of an inferno. “Do they want me to come?”

“It’s not about what they want, Jyn,” Bodhi said, gently.

What came out of her mouth is, “Do you love me?”

Bodhi looked startled. “Uh, Jyn, you know I don’t like women -”

“Not like that.”

“Oh.” He sat down next to her. His callused fingers stroked her hair, carefully pinning it back as usual. “Jyn, why do you think I stayed?”

Her hands were shaking. Forgiveness. “Okay,” she whispered, “Let’s go.”

  
Outside was a sky bison. It was massive, weighing at least six tons, with curly horns by its ears, and a huge tail to bend the air currents. Enfys sat on its head, holding the reins. The great white fuzzy beast made a loud bellow. Enfys smiled at their stupefied faces. She glided down, her pack strapped on, staff and helmet in hand. “The mountains around the Northern Air City are difficult to climb,” she said, “Master Quinlan said I could use her whenever I wanted. She’s yours now, for the time being. She’s just a baby, so be gentle.”

She sniffed the group curiously. Cautiously, Bodhi pulled a mango from his pack. The gigantic beast, six legs and all, immediately swallowed it with her broad, flat teeth. Then she licked Bodhi enthusiastically. Enfys beamed. “Seems I’m not the only airbender who likes you.”

“Me? But I thought sky bison only bonded with…well, Air Nomads.”

“They bond for life,” Enfys said softly, stroking the thick cream fur, “But maybe it knows you are a friend.”

Bodhi blinked. Hoarsely, he said, “We’ll miss you, Enfys.”

Her brown eyes were misty. Cassian looked away. He had always been edgy and distant around Enfys. She had never deserved that kind of treatment. It was too late now.

Luke, Leia, and Han watched as the rest of the group scrambled up the side of the sky bison into the saddle. Kay followed, curling up on Cassian’s feet and hissing at Jyn. Cassian extended his hand. She grasped it, using it to lever herself up and onto the saddle. She looked pale and wan. Still, she clapped his shoulder gratefully, settling down next to Chirrut. Cassian swallowed, his throat suddenly filling with bile.

Bodhi took the reins. “See you soon, everyone!”

The bison’s tail hit the ground. With a loud roar, she soared into the sky. Screaming, the group waved to their friends. Luke and Leia were running after them, laughing and yelling goodbye. Then they were gone. They streaked past the tallest domed roofs of Mon Cala, the high fortifications. The bison flew above the clouds, banked and steadied, heading North. Chirrut looked faintly green, holding grimly to Baze’s hand, Jyn in the other. “Everything is going to work out,” Baze said to them both.

In his pocket, the letter Ackbar had given him burnt: _Orders remain unchanged. We have uncovered weapons facility on Eadu. Leave immediately. Terminate Galen Erso. If no contact, will proceed to next best option._

Looking at the date, Cassian knew the next best option had more than likely already passed. And if it had not... His eyes met Jyn's for a moment. She nodded at him. He looked to the sky, unable to hold her gaze.

  
Thrawn steepled his hands and observed the ‘Mandalorians’ before him. They had been welcomed into the city. Vader looked strange disguised. What a vicious thing, hurt pride. “You have played your part masterfully, my Lord,” he said, dismissing the Mandalorian _qi_ -blockers in their service.

“I pray for your sake this farce will end quickly,” Vader snapped. Eli brought forth a case that contained the Right Hand’s personal armour. There was something else – _fear? Anticipation? Curious_. “And that your Earth King does not suspect. It can be terrible when you cannot trust those closest to you.”

"Yes," Thrawn demurred, glancing at the unique helmet Vader had used. A faded silver, with blue accents. "From anyone you know?"

"No," Vader said flatly. Pellaeon inched a little away from Vader.

Thrawn waved a hand, signalling him to begin the next step of the plan. He looked out his window, taking in the length and breadth of Mon Cala. And this was only the Upper Tier. Whoever controlled the Upper and Middle Tiers controlled the whole continent, and whoever controlled the narrative controlled its past, present, and future.

“All is falling into place,” Thrawn said smoothly, “This decade long endeavour shall soon be over, with our coup, and the Earth Kingdom will belong to the Fire Nation.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Parrot astrology is a real thing in South India and the Indian diaspora in Southeast Asia! The tiles would show different Hindu gods and goddesses. I looked up some of the cards but the interpretations and images are tweaked/adjusted here to fit the fantasy world and story. Chirrut's card (as well as the Spirit at the temple) is Lakshmi, Jyn's card is Shiva, and Cassian's card is Meenakshi. It's also customary to bring offerings of food, flowers, etc in Hindu temples.


	28. Book Two: Empire XIV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, we reach Dagobah (it only took Luke and Leia nearly three months in-story time!). Writing Jedi in this fic is an interesting challenge because I get to play with the religious "are the Jedi right" angle a lot (since if regular people like Cassian have magical powers, the only true difference would be belief system, not powers). 
> 
> Anyways, it's time for shit to absolutely hit the fan... I listened to the [Guardian of the Whills Suite](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqcXAPejbj0) a lot while writing.

Across the Earth Kingdom, the pieces began to fall into place. Thrawn was patient. He had played the part of the blessed new arrival for much of his life, accruing allies and connections. Mon Cala’s power rested in his pale hands. Only the Council of Five, Lee-Char’s blasted Generals, in particular Ackbar, stood in the way of total capitulation. He had not needed Vader, of course - but then, he had not anticipated the Avatar. But he saw the merit of the new plan – Vader’s raw power, the _qi_ -blockers, and the Earth Kingdom bureaucrats and troops loyal to his vision of an efficient, controlled world, will ensure all falls into place.

He placed a piece on the board. _Fett, to Bespin. Acquire Captain Solo. Send the Avatar and whichever friends are there packing back to Mon Cala._

Next, Eadu. _Director Krennic should be arriving. His Death Troopers will dispatch any intruders. Those that manage to escape back here will be caught swiftly. The bait for the trap.  
_

As for Mon Cala, he nodded at Pellaeon. "Admiral, the soldiers and _qi-_ blockers are in place to begin the coup."

"Excellent. Proceed."

Thrawn turned and surveyed the map of the Earth Kingdom. There was one matter that niggled at him. Dagobah, a swampland, part of an archipelago jutting out of the southeast Earth Kingdom. An old burial place for the Air Nomads, where they would hang the dead in trees to be eaten by the elements, a sky burial. Some might say there was something inherently spiritual of the place, but Thrawn was concerned with hard facts. Yoda…a peacekeeper of those Jedi, rumoured to have been their Grandmaster, the blind religious fools… recorded as dead for years.

It was no matter. Enlightenment was a cheap trick. He clasped his hands together and looked out on the city.

There are some things, that even Thrawn cannot predict…

  
Far away, the twins clambered over the rocks and roots of Dagobah. The entire island, in the green-blue waters of the Southeastern archipelago, was covered in mangrove forests, trailing upwards into high cliffs. He could hear apes and monkeys swinging in the trees, mouse-deer trekking through trails, snakes and crabs scuttling between the roots and sand. Before them was tiniest old man Luke had ever seen. He was covered in wrinkles, with wisps of white hair on his head and sprouting from his large ears. His skin was mottled with a green fungus, but his eyes were bright and luminous. “Found someone, you have,” he chortled, clutching his cane, made from a gnarled branch. “Help you, I can.”

“Well...whoever you are, we’re looking for a great warrior,” Luke said, stepping closer to the strange little man.

The old man chucked to himself. “*War? Wars not make one great*.”

The twins looked at each other. Luke didn’t need to touch his twin’s mind to read what she was broadcasting. In the midst of their silent conversation, the little man began poking and prodding Artoo and Threepio. Snickering, he pulled open their packs, enthusiastically chewing on some of their food. “Hey, put that down!” Leia cried, as he dug out her poncho.

Artoo, growling, grabbed one end with his mouth. Leia gasped, seeing the cloth and fur starting to pull. “Artoo, let him have it!” Luke yelled.

The old man whacked Artoo over the head. “Bad dog! Mine! Or I will help you not!”

Finally, Luke managed to get Artoo to relinquish his hold. With a firm glare from Luke, the old man handed over the poncho to Leia, not even concealing his huff. Artoo looked over at Luke, asking, _can I eat him? **Please?**_

“No, Artoo,” Luke said, though he was sorely tempted. Artoo sighed.

“Now leave us alone, we're here to find Yoda,” Leia snapped.

“Yoda?” The old man hopped onto a root to look at them in the face. “Hmm, know him, I do! But first, a snack.”

From his dirty robes, the old man pulled out two coconut shells tied together with twine. He opened them. A putrid smell emerged. “Banana and frog soup – eat, eat! Or I will help you not.”

"We don't -"

"Yes, yes, know him I do. Great Sage, of the Jedi..."

Luke pursed his lips, throwing his sister a beseeching look. Patience. With extreme reluctance, Luke accepted a shell and swallowed a mouthful. Instantly, he began to gag. “Oh, this is not worth it at all,” Leia murmured.

“Ugh, we’re wasting our time!” Luke snapped. “You’re just an old hermit trying to trick us!”

The old man’s head slumped. His ears drooped as he looked out distantly, speaking to someone. “Teach them, I cannot. Too angry, too impatient.”

“Ben?” he asked. Luke could not see or hear, and yet… Something, older than him, carried on from his past lives, _knew_. " _You're_ Yoda..." Rapidly, “No, no, we can learn!”

“Hmph,” Yoda said with a shake of his head, “Bridge between the Spirit World and ours, the Avatar is. Yet see Spirits in the physical world, you cannot. And worse, this one -” He rapped Leia on the head with his cane, “Sense it not! Spirituality of a rock!”

“We can learn to be more spiritual, to open ourselves,” Leia insisted, rubbing her head. Leia’s voice was tense. She flexed her hands, trying to leash the anger simmering under the surface. “And then we can open the Avatar State and beat -”

The old man shook his head in dismay, wandering away. “Beat? _Beat?_ ”

They chased after him. Yoda had found a wide sinkhole. It plunged deep into the island, so massive that trees were growing all over its sides. “But you brought us here to learn how to enter the Avatar State at will! You believe in the Jedi religion, you’re a powerful bender, you should know -”

“Bender? Bender, I am not, Skywalker,” Yoda said.

They drew back, startled. The air seemed to shift, grow thinner. “*Always looking to the horizon, Skywalker… Adventure, pah! Excitement, pah! Avatar crave them not,*” he said. “Organa, always looking inwards. Know nothing of the deep ocean, does the frog in the well. Avatar to all Four, bender and non-bender, you must be.”

The twins scowled. Leia snapped, “That's easy for you to say, living in your swamp!”

Yoda shook his cane emphatically. “Four Nations – think too much of it, you do. Transcend these rigged boundaries, the Jedi tried to be.”

_Tried_ … the word echoed in the charged atmosphere of this strange, breathing swamp. It was darker, sadder than Yavin. “Feel it, do you?” Yoda murmured, closing his rheumy eyes. “Old Air Nomad sky burial ground, this is. Studied with the great sages of the Air Nomads, eight-hundred years before I did. A spiritual place.”

Luke could see her biting back a retort. “Judge me, do you? Great Sage, this cannot be,” Yoda tutted.

Leia’s cheeks were flushed, eyes narrowed. Luke could feel his own ears burning. Patience. Patience. _We need to let him teach us._ They exhaled slowly. As one, they bowed, and if Leia's was a little shallower, Yoda did not comment on it. “Please, teach us, Master Yoda.”

The old Sage cocked his head. At last, he spoke, eyes closed. “Teach you, I will. But unlearn what you have learned, you must.”

After drinking more of Yoda’s disgusting banana-and-frog soup – “essential to the Spiritual journey!” he cackled – Yoda directed them to the sinkhole. “In there, we must go,” Yoda said, “No weapons. Leave them with the animals.”

They shrugged off their water-skins, securing them alongside their Air Nomad staffs to Artoo’s saddle. Luke stroked his stalwart companion, assuring him and Threepio they'd be back soon. Yoda perched himself on Luke’s shoulder. The old man's claw-like hands dug into his skin. “What’s down there?”

“Only what you take with you.”

_There’s no such thing as ghosts_ , Luke reminded himself. Linking with Leia, they began to bend. From deep within the sinkhole, water from hidden pools inside spiralled skyward. A shimmering water-spout crested up in front of them. “How do you get in there, if you can’t bend?” Luke asked, as the water curled around their feet, slowly lowering them into the cave.

Yoda laughed to himself, but did not answer. They dropped further and further down, clearing the vast greenery of the sinkhole. Stone swallowed them as they entered a further crack in the earth. His breath caught in his throat, almost dropping them.

The crack opened up into a great cave. This chamber alone must have been at least two-hundred feet high. The black walls were slick with water and lichen. They landed on a rock. The cave dropped further and further down into the underground water, its surface black and glass-like. Huge boulders, moss-covered, rolled all around them, a series of hills concealed underground, disappearing into further passageways. Stalagmites the size of towers rose up in the distance.

“Know nothing of the deep ocean, the frog does,” Yoda repeated, his luminous eyes lamp-like in the darkness.

He indicated for them to assume poses for meditation. They sat facing each other, legs folded in Lotus Pose, hands pressed together. “Magic power-up, Avatar State is not. Memory of a thousand lifetimes, it is. Live inside you, all past Avatars do. Mace, T’ra, Revan, Nomi…”

“It’s the beauty of the human experience,” Luke said, open his eyes with a start.

Yoda thumped his cane meaningfully. “Good, _good_. Now, listen. Feel. Beyond what you see and know, stretch out. See beyond the thick stone of the cave.”

Luke breathed slowly. His mind cleared. The sun passed through the sky above, shadows lengthening. Wind stirred the trees. The underground water bubbled, the ocean hummed, cutting through the stone. Bird song. He and Leia, their energies intermingling, rising from the ground like two stone statues. And… _something_. Half-memory, half-dream, whispering… The Spirits of Enfys’ people, Enfys, who was gone…

He gasped, opening his eyes. Yoda’s disappointed gaze fell upon them. “Hear you nothing that I say?”

“Meditating, reaching enlightenment – you can’t expect results at once!”

Yoda wagged his cane. “No. There is no difference. What is the role of the Avatar?”

“To keep the world in balance, and act as the bridge between the Spirits and humans,” Leia repeated, resting her chin on her hand.

“Great conceit we have. Are we not part of nature? You, girl, understand this.”

“Well, I, yes,” Leia said, “Because the Water Tribes live in such a difficult place, we understand that our fortunes are part of theirs, and they us. Our hunting keeps the populations in check to flourish in the next cycle.”

Yoda nodded. “Yes, _yes_. Listen: life, beating around us. Growing, dying, over and over. Energy surrounds us. Binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter,” he said, pinching Luke’s exposed shoulder, “You must feel it around you. Between you, me, the tree, the rock. Even between us, and the Spirits.”

Luke winced, rubbing the skin. Leia made a small grin. “That’s what you get for wearing shirts without sleeves.”

He very subtly earthbent to shift her out of her Lotus Pose. Leia squawked, flailing before she got her balance. Yoda sighed, handing them more banana-and-frog soup. “Truly, their father’s children they are, Obi Wan,” he said, though he sounded almost amused, watching them choke down the drink with revulsion. “Now, _listen_.”

It was almost night. His stomach rolled. His skin was hot and sticky and uncomfortable. But the twins returned to their stances, breathing in time together.

Reach out. Just as Luminara had said – every breathing thing, every animal and sapling and great old swamp tree… He heard the soft musical voices of the Air Nomads in the air, allowed them to wash over him. Time, time was illusion, Luminara had said… They were gone and yet they were here, a story that was already over and yet was happening right _now_ …

Something blue shone beyond his vision. Slowly, forming and re-shaping itself. Obi Wan Kenobi. A Fire Nation man, here in an Air Nomad site, in the Earth Kingdom, shaped by Water Tribe philosophy. Yoda raised his wizened head and nodded. Obi Wan smiled. “I don’t believe it,” they whispered.

“That is why you fail,” Yoda told them.

  
It took Enfys time to find travel out of Mon Cala, heading West. Savareen was on the Southwestern tip of the Earth Kingdom continent. Enfys didn’t expect anyone to be heading there. Especially now that Jedha had been wiped out. She could have flown, but it would be exhausting. Shouldering her pack, her helmet tied to her belt, she moved amongst the ranks of people swelling through the gates of Mon Cala. There was a cacophony of animals, carts, refugees on foot, pig-chickens screeching underfoot. Soldiers watched in the shade, occasionally harassing someone for their paperwork. Enfys kept clear. She had no papers to prove she deserved to be here.

The smuggler she found looked no older than twenty, with white-blonde hair and a headdress of jingling silver coins, of the Western Earth Kingdom. “Platt Okefe,” she said, clasping forearms with a twinkling smile. Still, her ostrich horses looked healthy. “Got another passenger heading that way, so make room with the crates. A lady, don’t worry.”

Enfys nodded in relief. She clambered up into the wagon to find the other passenger was already there. A woman, with inky black hair and tan skin. Her clothes, a blouse and split-skirts, were a green so deep it was almost blue, decorated with heavy beading and embroidery in the shape of diamonds. A bow and quiver of arrows, a war axe, and a pack sat next to her in the wagon. She was also very, very pregnant.

“I’m Enfys.”

The woman nodded. At a loss, Enfys settled herself, laying her staff, helmet, and pack down. The woman’s bright eyes flickered over the helmet for a moment. Reaching up, she tugged a tarp over, concealing them from sight. There was the sound of Okefe flicking the reins. Cart rattling, they passed through the gates, trundling along the crowded land bridge. For hours, they passed through checkpoints beneath the suffocating tarp. She felt the woman’s sweaty hand brush hers occasionally. Searching for a human connection in the sea of utter fear. I should have flown, Enfys thought wildly, at least over the walls, no matter if I got shot down by sentries. She grasped the woman’s hand as tight as she could.

At last, Okefe called, “We’re through, ladies! Make sure my herbs are safe!”

Gratefully, they peeled the tarp away. She sucked in a deep gulp of fresh air, shaking out her hair to clear the sweat. Enfys helped the woman resettle herself and her swollen belly. The woman sighed, resting her hands on her stomach. “Omera,” she said, glancing up, “My name is Omera.”

“Where are you heading?”

“Sorgan,” Omera said, “To go back to my tribe.”

Enfys knew only a little about the Northern Earth Kingdom. Sorgan - the name meant nothing to her. A What her friends in Cloudriders would say when she told them she had met a woman from Sorgan.

Her face must have fallen, for Omera said, “You’ve come from very far away.”

“Yes. From Savareen,” Enfys said.

“Savareen? What's that like?"

“Well, we lived on the coast, by the sea. Savareen is a desert, but just a short walk from where we camp… there’s a lake of pink water.” Omera looked disbelieving. “It’s true! The lake is full of algae that makes it pink. And it’s so salty – you could float on it. We would gather the salt in baskets to dry fish and seafood, pick the grasses and plants that grow around it for food.”

“Well, the Earth Kingdom is huge, it can fit the entire Fire Nation in it,” Omera murmured, resting her head against the wagon-side.

The sheer magnitude of the distance travelled settled into her. She had seen grasslands and mountains, the vastness of desert and the Holy City, Mon Cala, city of a million, a black-clad man who walked in fire, men and women who could paralyze with a touch, the Avatar…

“Did you also go to Mon Cala for a new life?”

Enfys turned her face towards the sky. “I suppose I did.”

“Was your home also taken?” At Enfys’ expression, she continued, “The War’s spread everywhere. You’ll forgive me for saying this, but I didn’t know many Air Nomads who were fighters.”

“How do you know I’m a fighter?”

Omera’s fingers traced the roundness of her belly. “Well, us women, people like us, this is a cruel and lawless world to be in.” She laughed, face softening. “Also, you have scars on your hands, and you’re wearing armour.”

She rapped Enfys’ wrist bracers. “Definitely real.”

Enfys laughed too. “I never knew people in the Earth Kingdom thought like we did.”

“And I thought all Air Nomads were stodgy sages looking for enlightenment,” Omera said.

She flushed. Omera's expression was hard. _Sages, mystics, Jedi,_ she thought bitterly. “A lot has changed. The old Ways... My Tribe, we left because… Our spirituality isn’t to transcend our suffering. The Spirits are in us, and we have to be in the physical world. Even if it leads to pain.”

A horrible sound. It was coming from her. She was crying, deep, gut-wrenching sobs that shook her whole body. It ached like she had ripped something straight out of herself. Luke, Leia, Han, Bodhi, Chirrut, Baze, Jyn, even Cassian Andor. Savareen was ahead. And she was so afraid. Omera touched her cheek, gently turning her until Enfys cried into her shoulder. “I’m scared, too,” Omera said.

“Because of the baby?” Enfys asked, allowing Omera to stroke her back. “My Tribe, if you don’t want it…”

“Oh, no. My Tribe is similar to your people. I am free. And thank you, for offering. No, I’m afraid of who I’ve become since I ran away,” Omera told her, “I don’t want to keep fighting. But the War hasn’t ended.”

Enfys saw the metal of her war axe was staineds. Much like the burnished metal of her helmet and armour. _This is someone who has all the power in the world,_ her Mumma had said, in the cool desert night. _The War has just begun,_ she had told Han Solo, at twelve years old. “Did you ever think you were forgetting, in Mon Cala?” Enfys asked. “The way your language sounds, dances…”

Omera’s face was sad. She imagined a locked box of memories spilling wide open when she stepped into the tall grasslands of Sorgan. “Yes,” Omera said, “And it’s worse because of the shit the Fire Nation, and settling raiders before them, have put us through. We dance for so many ghosts at _Nanih Waiya,_ the earthen Mother-mound in our lands.”

In the growing darkness, beneath the shadow of the mountains they were passing under, Enfys saw lightning. Omera continued, voice soft, “But my Mother said something, the day I ran away. She said, ‘there is a part of you that has never left here, and never will’. One day you will come back to the Sorgan Way. And that is why we endure, despite everything.”

“No one should have to endure,” Enfys whispered. The lightning flashed once more. Lightning was an ill omen for a people whose feet were often off the ground. She grasped the warm, earthen weight of Omera’s arm.

“Did you know,” Omera said, “The man I met in Mon Cala, he was working at the university. And he said to me, did you know that women live longer, that your bodies are designed to survive and thrive? And I told him, I already knew that. I look at the grandmothers of my tribe, what they bring to my people, community, and land.”

“What are you saying?”

“That we were designed to outlast conflict. To build something better,” Omera told her, “You know, I admired you, Enfys Nest. But there's no shame in being weary, too."

Omera knew. "No," Enfys said, curling her fingers into her tunic, "My shame is a mask. It's a mask to do nothing."

She turned her head back towards the faint impression of Mon Cala. Her friends had left. But maybe those who had gone to Eadu would be back by the time she arrived. Eadu, Air Nomad land. She should have been with them. To protect from the lightning and wind. Spirits, if they had died... Enfys stood. It didn’t matter why, what her destiny was, right now. The War was not over. _The child is dead._

“I have to go back.”

She unstrapped her helmet. “I hope you find your way home, Enfys,” Omera said.

Enfys looked back at the woman, her red hair shifting in the strong winds. “I hope you do as well,” she whispered. "What will you name her?"

Omera stroked her belly. "Winta," she said, "Her name will be Winta."

_Wish,_ in one of the Air Nomad tongues. Enfys nodded, raising a hand in farewell. She tapped her glider open, soaring through the lightning-filled sky, leaving sparks in her wake.

  
The next morning dawned bright and warm through the gap in the cave roof. They slurped down the banana-and-frog soup (Luke wasn’t sure if it was just constant exposure, but it was starting to taste disturbingly good). Yoda took back the coconut shells. They resumed meditating as the old Sage paced in front of them, lecturing.

“The root of bending power, spirituality is. To become the Avatar, unlock all seven chakras of the body’s energy, you must."

"Chakras?" Leia asked.

"Like a stream, energy flows. See here," Yoda said, pointing down towards the cave stream below. "See, these pools, where water lingers. Where energy is concentrated, your chakras are. Clouded by emotion and attachment, yours are, like the weeds in the stream. Clear this emotional muck, we must. Only then, become Avatar you will. Journey through the cave, we will. Open every chakra. You must not run from what you see, feel.”

“We’ll try,” they said, settling into meditation.

“No. Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

The twins closed their eyes.

  
Lando paced in Bespin’s temple, cursing under his breath. The decorated wooden mask of the spider Spirit, she who had woven the strands of the sky, trickster and protector, depending on the whims of the wind, watched him without comment. As a teenager, he would never have prayed to her. But now, Lando would have asked for help from anyone. Below, Boba Fett and the garrison of Fire Nation soldiers lurked below. “This deal just keeps getting worse and worse,” he muttered to himself.

He could feel her uncurl herself near him, picking at her nails. Elthree, dark and dead and haunting him, still. “You brought this on yourself,” she said, resting her forearms against the window slit. Her tight dark curls moved in the breeze of the cliffs of Bespin. On the back of her neck was a slave brand.

“I wanted to do something right, like you always said!” he said, trying to keep his voice firm. _The trickster was too tricky by half_ , the wooden mask seemed to whisper, _and now you must pay the price._

The council of the Mino, the Mothers, didn’t know what to do with him, after he’d tricked Bespin’s old council head in a game of Sabaac to become leader. At first it had all been fun and games, sacriligeous business plans to mine their resources, but now –

“You’re just like all the other brothers who leave when they get a taste of the outside world,” Elthree spat, “Want a girl in every port, never mind she’s hungry, want a girl to clean up after you, want money, don’t care who -”

“Go away!” Lando snapped, hollow. The apparition left him.

There was a dry cough. Boba Fett was standing in the doorway. If he heard, he gave no sign. “Falcon docked at the bottom of the mountain,” the bounty hunter said, “Get ready.”

Lando shook his cape out, striding out to where the long ropes carried non-benders up and down. Emerging from the wooden platform was a familiar handsome face. _Do something for our people_ , Elthree had always argued.

“Han,” he said, sealing both their fates.

  
In a dark cave…

_Earth Chakra. Deals with survival, and is blocked by fear._

The War. Loss, of family, of friends. Vader. Beneath Vader’s mask, my face, Vader, he’s here, Master Yoda, he’s _here_ …

_Not real, what you are seeing. Let go of fear._

  
Han walked through the winding corridors of one of the large carven spires of Bespin. “So, how’d a guy like you end up running this place? Thought your people were all about freedom and no possessions, not ex-smugglers.”

Lando, dressed in a glaringly yellow tunic and cape, grinned affably. Handsome devil, still. “Well, Iet's just say my free-spirited soul led me straight to a special card-table. And who else has changed, huh? Rebel work?”

Han grinned, puffing up his chest. “Yeah. Yeah, I like it.”

“And I like being a Council Head, even if it was a little under the table. It’s interim, I’m keeping us running, yadda yadda.” He laid a hand on Han’s shoulder. “But where’s the Avatar? They are, I must say, enchanting in every portrait.”

Han snorted, imagining Lando charming the twins. “Down in Dagobah, Avatar stuff.”

Lando laughed, but there was an odd edge to it. His smile was tight. “Is that so?”

  
_Now, water chakra. See, this stream. Clear it, we must. Deals with pleasure, blocked by guilt. What burdens carry you?_

Running away from the homestead. Lashing out at your friends. Hurting Leia in the tomb. Alderaan. Not being there for the world. Jedha.

_Accept reality. Poison your waters, guilt you must not allow. Forgive yourself. Let the water flow._

  
Eadu was a series of black cliffs, constantly pelted by rain and wind. To its North was Takodana, the Northern Air City, and then the sea leading towards the North Pole. Jyn gripped the saddle with white knuckled fingers. Her clothes were soaking. Cassian at least had his poncho, but they were shivering. Chirrut was praying. He could not see. How terrified he must be feeling. She grabbed his hand.

At the front, Bodhi was pulling the bison left and right to avoid the rocks. “You got this, you got this, just a bit lower, that’s it,” he soothed the creature. Cassian was directing, yelling, “Left, left, are you sure this is the right way?”

“That’s what it shows on the map – why is your lizard here?”

“We don’t need your help, Kay,” Cassian said, pushing the sulking Kay back into the saddle. “There, there -”

They scraped against a cliff face, tearing open the saddle. Jyn screamed. Baze’s warm hand grabbed hers, and she Chirrut, as the wind nearly carried them away.

Through the rain, the facility burst into view. A large bridge crossed a canyon that led to a hulking metal complex. With a grunt, Bodhi brought the bison down on the cliff right in front of the bridge. They gasped. For a moment, the sheer fact that they had made it kept them still. Then reality set in. The saddle was badly damaged. A huge facility, covered in guards, awaited. Bodhi, dropping the reins, asked, “How do they even get up here? The tanks can’t cross this kind of terrain.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of finding out,” Cassian said grimly. He was strapping on his knives and water-skin. Jyn barely listened until she heard only Cassian and Bodhi would be going.

“I’m coming with you,” Jyn said, removing her pack.

“No. You’re the only one who knows the message. We can’t risk it.”

Jyn frowned. There was something wild in Cassian’s eyes. Haunted. A shard slid, cold, into her mind. Cassian, Cassian sitting with her in the rain, in the darkness. “That’s ridiculous. Everyone knows it, and the Earth King has already heard me.”

“Get to work fixing the saddle!” Cassian snapped. “*All I want to do right now is get a handle on what we’re up against. So, we’re gonna go very small and very careful up the rise, and see what’s what.”

Jyn stared after them, her heart thundering in her chest. She helped Baze remove the saddle, glancing back where they’d gone. Chirrut spoke. “Does he have the face of a killer?”

“Why would you ask that? Cassian is our friend, Chirrut,” Baze said.

The ropes she was holding fell from her slack fingers.

“What is Cassian about to do?” Jyn demanded, grabbing his hands.

Chirrut gazed up with sightless eyes. “He was lying,” he told her.

Jedha. The ice dagger that had flown through the dry desert air to find its mark. Eadu. _I can bend the rain_ , he had said, and his eyes had been so soft. Eadu, full of cold rain under the control of a master waterbender. She began to run.

_Fire Chakra. Feel the heat of the sun. Deals with willpower, and is blocked by shame._

Our arrogance. Our anger. Burning Cassian in Ilum. We’re never going to firebend again.

_Firebender you are, as Avatar. Never will you be whole to deny it. Yes, yes. Accept the truth of what you are._

Cassian put his binoculars to his eyes as they crouched on the ridge. A squad of soldiers and civilians in black uniforms were assembling on the platform. Not good. He handed the binoculars to Bodhi. “Which one is Galen?”

The other man squinted. “The one in the centre, there.”

Cassian grabbed the binoculars, when he heard a noise. High above, something was moving through the air. Dark red, with a brown basket…

“It’s a war balloon,” Cassian realized, with mounting dread. They had taken the sea and nearly wiped out the Tribes. They had land with their tanks and had destroyed the Earth Kingdom. And now, “The Fire Nation has figured out how to fly.”

He whirled on Bodhi. “Get back down and start fixing the saddle! Hurry!”

Bodhi slid away, tripping on rocks in his blind panic. Cassian adjusted his binoculars. Galen. He had to kill Galen. Galen, Jyn’s father, Jyn, praying in the temple for a man who had made horrors but who wished to end them. He forced his eyes to the scene across the canyon. The balloon had landed, and a man in white was emerging.

There was no time. It had to be now. He began to bend. Every drop of rain, pulsing and shimmering within his vision. All his to command. Sleek and sharp and cold as it formed a single, glittering blade from his hand to the platform.

Cassian raised the binoculars and looked at Galen Erso’s face.

The dagger fell, unused, into the canyon. It splintered into glimmering shards.

He sat back, gasping. In the moments that followed he would not be able to pinpoint why – Galen had his daughter’s eyes – Galen was trying to do right – Tivik on Kafrene, Lothal, Jedha, Enfys’ disgust – the fortune-teller – he had to stop, he could not keep moving. He had to drown in this black, cold rain, like the tiger-shark.

Shaking, he pulled the binoculars once more to his face. He saw a small figure crawling onto the platform, unseen. Dark hair, blazing green eyes. “Cassian! Cassian, there’s a group of sky bisons approaching the area!” Bodhi yelled.

_Next best option_ , the letter said. No, no, no. “It’s an attack. They’re the rebels – they’re coming to destroy the facility. We have to stop them! Jyn’s on that platform!”

The first blasting jelly mine hit. The platform exploded. _“Jyn.”_

_Fourth Chakra, air chakra, in the heart. Deals with love, and is blocked by grief. Lay all grief out._

Father. Mother. Aunt Beru. Uncle Owen. Ben. The Southern Water Tribe – too many people to name. So many people, disappearing into smoke.

_Felt great loss, you have. Energy, love is, and swirls all around us. Not gone, this love is, but reborn, into new love. Compassion, selfless love, is part of the Avatar._

Cassian. Han. Chewie. Threepio. Artoo. Kay. Enfys. Chirrut. Baze. Bodhi. Jyn.

_Very good. Now wipe your eyes, young Avatar, and look to your present._

Her head was ringing. She had been thrown back from the blast. Her face stung, burnt. Above, the skies blazed with explosions. The platform was cold and slick. Krennic was leaving. He had never even known she was there.

Jyn began to crawl. There, was the broken, bleeding body of Galen Erso. She cradled him. He felt thin and fragile. “Papa? Papa, it’s me. It’s Jyn,” she pleaded.

His shaking hand, damp with blood, touched her face. “Jyn. My Stardust.” Galen’s voice was a ragged gasp. His eyes were pale and glassy. His hand fell. Galen Erso smiled, soft, kind. “I dreamt you lived. Oh Stardust, I have so much to tell you.”

Her father’s still, cooling body lay in her arms. She ran her fingers over his face, the new wrinkles, the grey in the beard and hair, as though she could crawl inside it and become a child again. Just one blink, one heartbeat, one tender look, that was all she had ever asked for. Someone touched her shoulder. She looked.

It was Cassian. “ _You_ ," she said.

"Jyn, we have to go. Come on.”

“You can heal him,” she begged, “Please, heal him -”

“Jyn.” His voice was broken. She sobbed, and then she screamed, fire pouring from her mouth, and he reared back. “Jyn, he’s already dead. I can’t… I can’t do anything for him. We have to go.”

He pulled her away. On the platform, Galen Erso’s body lay, swallowed by rain.

_Sound Chakra. Hear the echoes in this cave. Deals with truth, and is blocked by lies. The ones we tell ourselves._

That we can’t do it. That we are too young, too inexperienced, too late.

_That is not so. But more to tell, is there not?_

That... that there’s something in me, frightening and angry. And if I let it out...

_Human, the Avatar is. Anger, pain, part of it is You will grow beyond. Accept the truth of your own nature, you must._

Exhaustion must have taken her at some point. She awoke to the sky bison flying through the sunrise after the storm-covered mountains. The broken saddle was bathed in gold. Her eyes met Cassian’s. They were cold and dispassionate. Chirrut grabbed her hand. She was the biggest fool of all.

Jyn wrenched away. The other night could have been nightmare. She would wake in the warmth of the house in Mon Cala, Cassian would be sitting in the kitchen and he would look at her with those eyes and ask how she was sleeping. They would sit in the quiet and he would peel her oranges and she could believe, just for a moment, that he – “You _lied_.”

Shock, he told her. This man who would have killed her father.

“Deny it.” She wanted him to. She wanted him to look at her and say it was otherwise. But she knew him now, ever since that polar night where he had told her to run, and she knew it was a vain, false hope.

I disobeyed orders, he said. Something white-hot sparked. She spoke the curse, the words he hated most. _You might as well be a Fire Nation soldier._

Something snapped there in Cassian’s eyes. “Suddenly the War is real for you. Some of us live it. I’ve been in this fight since I was six years old!” he snarled, dark eyes boring into her. “You’re not the only one who lost everything. Some of us, just decided to do something about it.”

“You can’t talk your way out of this,” she hissed, at this man who had survived a genocide, who had taken her to the temple, with the fortune-teller, she should have –

“I don’t have to,” he said, and turned away.

Jyn crawled to Bodhi. Wordlessly, he lifted his arm. She pressed herself against him, and allowed herself to cry. Bodhi stroked her hair.

They landed the bison to fix the saddle properly in some mountain valley. They were near Cato Nemoidia, Jyn guessed, seeing the huge stone pillar formations that towered over the misty grass. She registered these facts numbly. Cassian bent water from everyone’s damp clothes, but Jyn did not let him do so. Her inner fire was boiling. Steam hissed off her clothing as she walked through the field.

Her father would be cold forever. There was no passage to the great Wheel of Reincarnation. Not for him, not for her mother, not even for Saw, whose culture and customs she had been too blinded to learn.

Jyn realised she was gathering branches to build a pyre. It must be a pyre, for the heat of Sól’s flame to ignite the mortal form into ash. There is no body, the action was meaningless. But she stacked the branches there, all the same.

“Salt,” she said, dazed, “To anoit the body, an offering if you can. A coin in the mouth, to the pay the boatman, to carry the soul across.”

Someone extended a hand.

Cassian, holding the gold coin from the day at the temple. It felt a lifetime ago. She took the coin, her fingertips scrapping his callused palm, and tossed it onto the branches. Jyn concentrated, igniting the pile. She had to keep the fire from spreading, from burning the entire field.

He stood next to her, watching as the heat melted the coin. There was nothing gentle in the funeral. Jyn had been to one, as a child. The air had smelt of awful burnt flesh and smoke, like Bodhi when Vader had struck him down, like her mother’s body when the lightning bolt had hit her chest, like her father when the explosives had hit the platform.

“You were going to kill my father,” she whispered. Cassian nodded. “Why?”

“I thought it would help to end the War.”

“Would it?” she asked.

Cassian looked down at his hands. They were shaking. “I don’t know.”

How do you love someone that you hate?

How do you mourn them?

The fire kept burning. “He was my father,” she said dully. The emotions had settled, and she waited for grief. But there was only a hollow anger, an aching tiredness.

“I know,” Cassian whispered.

_Light Chakra. Deals with insight, and is blocked by illusion. The greatest illusion, is the illusion of separation. See here this cave: rock, water, air, and fire from the Sun. From the four Nations, to the four elements, all are one. Purified and refined Earth, even metal is._

Everything is connected. Like in the swamp!

_Yes. Very good. Embrace that truth._

They landed just outside the palace. Cassian turned to the bedraggled group. “We need to tell General Ackbar and the Earth King of what we saw. If Krennic was willing to leave his scientists for dead, it means the weapon is almost ready. Jyn and I will find the King. The rest of you, find Ackbar.”

Jyn didn’t respond, but followed after him as they ran up the steps. Her forehead was bleeding from the explosion. He hadn’t thought to heal it. Cassian didn’t reach towards her. Later, later… They pushed open the doors and came to a halt.

Lying across the cushions was the dead body of the Earth King. Lee-Char’s eyes watched them, face still twisted in a scream. Before him stood Thrawn, and Vader. Thrawn smiled coldly, still holding the knife. He made a gesture.

Two dark shadows dropped from the ceiling. Before Cassian could bend, the Mandalorians’ hands hit his shoulders and back. He collapsed onto the ground, paralyzed. His bending water pooled around him. Move, move - he couldn't bend!

Jyn fell beside him. Their eyes met, frantic and terrified. His throat was seized. Nothing would move, nothing would work. Was this how the War began, the Jedi benders paralyzed, knowing all they would feel was an arrow or blade? He tried to speak through his gaze.

“Throw them in the crystal catacombs!” Thrawn ordered.

Across Mon Cala, the coup continued. In the office of General Ackbar, the Mandalorians felled Bodhi, Baze, Chirrut.

_Chirrut_ , Baze thought. Without his bending or movement, Chirrut was blind, but Baze could not reach him. Spirits, Baze prayed for the first time in twenty years, Spirits, let Luke and Leia escape. Four of the Five Generals were rounded up, killed. Political opponents disappeared.

And across Mon Cala, the question rang. Where is the Avatar?

Under the stars, in an ancient swamp, some time before, the twins meditated. Power thrummed in their veins. “Enter the Avatar State at will, once final chakra is unlocked. Full awareness of your actions, you will have,” Yoda croaked. The twins nodded.

Yoda raised his rheumy eyes to the stars. “Thought Chakra. Deals with pure cosmic energy, and is blocked by earthly attachment. Give up all that holds you here, you must, to walk path of enlightenment. Mistakes of your father, you must not repeat.”

The words pierced through the swamp heat.

“You want us to give up our attachments to our friends and family?” Leia cried.

“Unlock it, you must. If you do not, _never_ will you enter the Avatar State again.”

The twins tried. The material world stretched outwards, streaking past in bright light. They were walking through an ocean of stars. Ahead was the great glowing form of their Avatar Spirit. It stood, a shimmering outline of two figures, mirroring them. In its hands was the world. They reached forward.

Then, screaming. Visions, playing across the darkness outside their path. Cassian and Jyn, felled. Mon Cala, ablaze. Han, dragged through Bespin by a bounty hunter. Vader's mask.

They were thrown from their trance. Luke gasped, grabbing hold of the rock to meet Leia's terrified gaze. If they were too much like their father, then so be it. “Our friends are in danger! We have to go!”

"No! Leave now, without all chakras open, and you cannot enter the Avatar State!" Yoda cried.

Leia was pulling him to his feet, whistling for Artoo and Threepio. "They're my friends; I can't leave them!"

"Not your friends they want, but you! Remember the cave - remember your visions!" Yoda insisted.

"They'll _die_ if we stay here!"

There was sorrow on Yoda's wizened face. "Only the Avatar, with all four elements, _and_ the Avatar State, will conquer Vader and his Emperor. There is no easy path. You are more than Luke and Leia - you are the Avatar, the most powerful in the world!"

"And sacrifice our friends?" Luke demanded.

"If you honour what they fight for?" Yoda said, _"Yes."_

"We'll come back," Luke said, "I promise."

The old Sage hung his head, and Luke knew, in that moment, they would never see Master Yoda again. They climbed from the cave, mounted Artoo, and left the old mystic behind.

Enfys breathed in, standing in front of the house at Mon Cala. How would she start?

Leaving had felt like a visceral wound. She would never spend time with Leia and Jyn, swap war stories with Baze and Chirrut, drink with Han, help out around with the house with Bodhi, train the twins, see Luke’s smile. _Sacrifice._

She pushed open the door. The house was empty. What belongings they had left here were scattered and torn. She ran her fingers across the floor and found ash. In the distance, she heard the march of foot-soldiers.

“No,” she whispered. She ran from the building and took flight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) The lake Enfys describes is based off of Lake Retba in Senegal. The cave in Dagobah is based off massive cave systems like the Son Doong Cave, and Deer Cave in Vietnam, and Malaysia respectively. 
> 
> 2) Omera's actress, Julia Jones, is Choctaw and Chickasaw Native American. Nanih Waiya is a real ancient platform mound in Mississipi sacred to the Choctaw. I haven't watched much of the Mandalorian (is there less filler in S2? that's what made S1 tiring to watch for me), but I found Omera as a character fascinating.


	29. Book Two: Empire XV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Bespin's natural geography is based off Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park in Madagascar. 
> 
> 2) I think the tracks [The Avatar State](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBGPVmMUVHc) and [ Last Agni Kai](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFnnNijn_OI) are appropriate for this chapter.
> 
> 3) And yes...Baze being all "how dare you talk that way about Chirrut and our relationship"...was a littleee bit inspired by The Old Guard.

Bespin was too quiet, Leia thought. Threepio, for once silent, sat on her shoulder. She clutched her staff tightly in her hand. Artoo and Luke crept in front of her. The island of Bespin was covered in incredible needle-like limestone rock formations. Some rippled like waves, while others were stacked like the thrown toys of a giant. The city itself was made of wooden and clay spires balanced precariously atop them. A city in the clouds, though city was a generous word for a place of only a few hundred. Bridges crossed between, flags and textiles hanging from them, fluttering. She could hear the soft thrums of the inhabitants flying, the bellows of sky bisons.

Yet the main spire was curiously empty. They moved slowly upwards. “This isn’t right,” Leia whispered. The rich colours, spreading from white to orange to brown, seemed to mock her. 

They emerged from another stairwell, turning a corner to see - “Han!”

His feet and hands were chained. Fire Nation soldiers were trying to drag him down towards the staircase. Beside them was the armoured bounty hunter from Corellia, Boba Fett. Han saw them. His face contorted, eyes widening.

Raggedly, he yelled, “Leia! Luke! Don’t go back to Mon Cala, Vader -”

The bounty hunter placed a long thin blade against Han’s neck. Leia choked back a scream. Han went still, eyes flickering back and forth frantically between the knife and Fett. The bounty hunter said, “You see how this is. Fight me and he dies. Drop the weapons. No sudden moves."

Slowly, the twins dropped their staffs and water-skins. Leia's lips pulled back from her teeth, seeing the gleam of satisfaction in the thin helmet slit that revealed Fett's eyes. "Cuff them and send word to Lord Vader. Store them in the Temple until he gets here.”

Fire Nation soldiers pulled their hands behind their back, shackling them together. A soldier grabbed their fallen weapons. Artoo howled and lunged, only stopping at Luke’s yell. Boba Fett and the remaining soldiers gave Han a firm shove. She met his eyes. In that moment, it was all so utterly foolish. There would always never be enough time.

So she spoke. “Han. I love you.”

He looked at her, as he had done in the Falcon’s hold, and she melted. “I know.”

Then he was gone.

Leia tried desperately to think of a plan as the soldiers dragged them elsewhere. Comparmentalise. Focus. Think, _think_ , damn you!

An arrow pierced through the soldier holding her. Leia jerked backwards. More arrows flew. The Fire Nation soldiers dropped to the ground. From a window emerged a dark-skinned man in an elegant yellow shirt and cape. He dropped down from the ledge with a quick grace. He snapped the bow back over his shoulder. Following him, looking peeved, was Chewie.

The man began removing their cuffs, speaking rapidly. “I’m Lando Calrissian. I’m Han’s friend… I was the one who let the bounty hunter and the Fire Nation into the city to keep Bespin safe… but it’s all gone to shit. I’m sorry. I can help you escape.”

“You betrayed him!” Leia yelled, seizing the front of his shirt. Oh, she wanted to make this man bleed. Han had _trusted_ him. Chewie roared in agreement.

“Leia!” Luke grabbed her shoulder, and she looked up at him, hissing. “We don’t have a choice! We need to get out of here!”

Outside, a warning was ringing across the city, sound-bent to deafening levels. “This is a message from Council Head Lando Calrissian! The Fire Nation is occupying this city! Leave immediately for your own safety!”

“You came here on the Falcon, right?” Lando said. Leia reluctantly released him. “I know how to pilot it. It used to be my ship. We could go -”

“Luke knows how to pilot it,” Leia spat.

“He’s coming with us. We’re going to Mon Cala,” Luke said firmly. “Our friends are in danger.”

“Vader _wants_ you to go to Mon Cala! This whole thing is a trap!”

“I know,” Luke said. Leia nodded too, still frowning at Lando. “But we can’t leave them. Not now.”

Chirrut could feel movement returning. He allowed the energy in his body to swirl. By degrees, it strengthened him. They had been attacked by Mandalorians who blocked _qi_ , like those from the Separatist Wars. He'd thought they all returned to their homeland with the War, fighting against the Fire Nation during the Fall of Mandalore. Never mind that. Chirrut focused. His senses were returning. He could not see. But the ground was cold and solid. A metal cell. Trapped, then. He bowed his head, hearing it thunk against the metal floor. It was hopeless. The Spirits had abandoned them.

In the background, he could hear Baze calling, “Chirrut! Chirrut, answer me, I beg you!”

“What’s all this fussing?” A guard. “Shut your damn mouth, I’ve had it with your yammering!”

“What would you understand?” Baze snapped. “Do you know who this man is?”

The warmth in Baze’s voice burned him more than the great fire that had burned in the Holy Temple. He remembered the old days, as young men, when they had sparred in its courtyard, and he had known he would love this man forever. Love and faith that had held Baze to his side against all odds. Even when Baze had sobbed as the Holy Temple fell around them.

Chirrut slowly placed his hands on the floor. Metal. Metal came from the refineries.

“Do you know I loved him from the moment I saw him training in the Temple Garden?”

He was starting to see, to sense. He slapped the metal lightly. The Fire Nation mined the Earth Kingdom for minerals to build their metal ships. From the very earth the badgermoles had shown him to bend, its song and blood that beat through the years.

_The greatest illusion, is the illusion of separation._

“Do you know that I found a way to show him the stars?”

He was not, could never be separated from Baze as long as they walked together on this Earth. Chirrut slapped his palms against the floor again. The vibrations coursed across the space. He could see Baze, furious and vengeful, face pressed up against the guard. In the corner crouched poor Bodhi.

“You’re scum, falling in line with petty tyrants who hate those like us, like _you_. This man walks with the Spirits! Or at least, he says he does!”

Chirrut slammed his fists into the metal, buckling it. He could feel every bit of earth sitting inside the iron. _Bend._ A great rift tore through the metal with a screech. The guard cried out. The door tore off its hinges. It slammed into the guard, knocking him out cold. There was a second of stunned silence.

“Did you just…bend metal?” Bodhi whispered, awestruck.

“Yes!” Chirrut pulled himself to his feet. He turned to Baze. “You old romantic.”

Then he seized him, and kissed him, fierce and true. “You are amazing – and annoying,” Baze said, kissing him on both cheeks. “Now let’s get out of here!”

"As I told you," Thrawn said, observing the pacing Krennic over his interlocked fingers, "That was all the information Galen Erso's daughter provided. They know a superweapon _exists._ Of course, she suggested -"

"Yes, I'm sure she suggested there was more information she had, that's the _problem_ ," Krennic snapped. Thrawn's face remained still at the Director's fury. Though his clothes were dry, Krennic's hair was still damp from Eadu. An oversight likely in his own mania. _How embarrassing._ "Now where are those damned earthbenders to get me down there?"

"Patience, Director," Thrawn murmured, "The more time you wait, the more likely the _qi_ -block will have worn off enough for her to speak."

"And for the rebels to arrive!"

"That may prove useful to you," Thrawn continued idly, running a hand across his desk, "Seeing as your plan, if I may be so bold, is to hope this girl will protect against your own failings?"

"Galen would have told her more - I've known her for years. She has no loyalty to anyone but her own, she's no Rebel. She'll talk."

"Unfortunate for you then, that her father is dead."

"Oh, no," Krennic smiled, all teeth, "I have an idea about that."

“There are too many guards!” Bodhi yelled, as Chirrut continued to bend metal – metal! The prison wing of the Palace was engulfed by the Earth King’s elite guards, now loyal to Thrawn. Knuckles split open, he wrestled with one desperately.

A gust of wind sent the guards smashing into the walls. They fell, knocked out. Standing there was Enfys, and she was holding Kay’s reins. “You came back,” Baze said, a smile tugging at his lips.

“Of course I did,” she said. Bodhi tugged her into a hug. She held him tightly for a moment, then released him. “Where is everyone? I found Kay in the first cell, hissing and spitting! And where’s my sky bison?”

“Galen Erso is dead. Vader and Thrawn have taken over the city. Jyn and Cassian went to warn the King, they must have been taken,” Bodhi said rapidly, “And we heard from the guards that the King is dead.”

A silence fell. All four lived in the Earth Kingdom, had called it a home at some point. “It’s not over,” Chirrut said, squaring his fists, “We find Ackbar. If he is alive and can rally his men, there is a chance to retake the city.”

“I saw General Ackbar when I was flying back in,” Enfys said, “In the farming ring, helping the refugees. We find him, and we find Cassian.”

“And Jyn!” Bodhi cried desperately. “Please, we can’t leave Jyn behind.”

“We aren’t going to leave her,” Baze said severely, as they sprinted out of the Palace compound. Smoke was in the air. They collided directly with a bedraggled-looking Luke, Leia, Artoo, Chewie, and Threepio. Leia’s eyes were red-rimmed. With them was a handsome dark-skinned man in a flamboyant cape, as well as a trussed and tied Earth Kingdom soldier.

For a split second, they all stared at each other, gaping.

“You’re alive!” There was shouting and hugging and tears, but it was bitter, clumsy, nothing joyful in it. In a rush, they explained everything. Leia’s face smoothened, pulling herself together. “We need to split up – get General Ackbar and the men loyal to him. Lando, get the Falcon ready with the animals to leave at a moment’s notice,” Leia said. She seized the soldier by the front. “Now tell us where they’re hiding our friends!”

“I-i-in the Crystal Catacombs of the Old City! Beneath the Palace!”

Chirrut pressed his hand to the ground. “There’s something below, very deep,” he said. With two sharp thrusts, he bent a chasm that headed into the ground.

“We’re going down there, getting Jyn and Cassian, and then Vader,” Luke said.

“I’m coming with you!” Bodhi said. He had to find Jyn. Something was not right, he had a terrible feeling, worse than Mon Cala's fall. They raced through, Luke and Leia bending the tunnel deeper and deeper –

The darkness burst into a cavern of glittering green light. And waiting, were Vader, and Krennic.

Baze’s respect for Ackbar grew the minute they found him and the remnants of his men, fiercely battling with a curved blade. Mon Cala had focused on itself, its own battle against the Fire Nation, its elite, instead of rallying together with the wider Earth Kingdom, joining hands with the wretched below. Here was something different. It was all that was left. Baze was not a hopeful man. He knew where the tides were shifting. He loved his friends, would die for them – but he did not believe the War could be won. Not today, at least.

With their help, the enemy was dispatched in moments. “What has happened to the King?” was Ackbar’s first demand.

“Dead,” Baze said flatly. Enfys and Chirrut were helping the soldiers to their feet and making sure the enemy stayed down. “The other four Generals are dead already. There are Fire Nation troops inside the city. Are these all your men?”

“Only my most trusted,” Ackbar said. Captain Wedge was amongst the number. “Do you have a way of getting out? We can gather more of my men at the harbour!”

“Our ship is there as well. This may be bumpy,” Chirrut told him. He bent a great slab of rock and climbed aboard. He gestured for them to climb aboard. Ackbar made a gesture as though to say, lead on.

Enfys did not move to join them. She stood, staring towards the city proper. “Little sister?” Baze asked, touching her arm.

She looked at him desperately. “I have a bad feeling…We should go back for them.”

“We need to do what we can with what remains of the military,” Baze said, as gently as possible. “That’s our job.”

Enfys shook her head. “You think we’re going to lose,” she whispered, “You think they can’t beat Vader. This is a retreat!”

“I don’t want you to die as well!” Baze snapped.

She unfurled her glider. “There’s still hope, Baze. I’m going to find my sky bison.”

It was several hours before Cassian could feel movement in his body. They had been thrown into some kind of catacomb, filled with glowing kyber crystals. He was reminded suddenly, of the Cave of the Two Lovers. Red and blue. Slowly, he sat up, flexing his fingers. They had taken all of his weaponry, water-skin included. Where was Jyn? Then he saw her, curled in on herself, facing away from him. Her shoulders twitched with her breathing. Too quick for sleep.

“Can you firebend through the rock?” Cassian asked, for lack of anything better.

She looked over her shoulder at him, shook her head. She turned back and stared blankly at the kyber crystals. Cassian's eyes narrowed at her silence. He stood, pacing, scraping his fingers across the stone until it nearly drew blood. “Are you just going to sit there while the Earth Kingdom falls down around us? Are you that selfish?”

Jyn said nothing.

“I guess you don’t care,” Cassian snapped.

“What do you know?” Jyn spat, turning her face slightly.

He rounded on her. “What do _I_ know? I know the devastation of Fest. I know what the dead body of my mother looked like.”

Cassian shuddered, pressing his forehead against the rock. Not that day. He would not, could not, remember it. There was a sound. He glanced over his shoulder. Jyn had turned. Her eyes were red-rimmed. “Well,” she said, her voice hoarse, her eyes flitting back and forth like a caught animal, “I know that too.”

He looked at her properly. Suddenly all the fight left him. His shoulders slumped. He was so _tired_. He was tired of looking for someone to say “I forgive you, you did what you had to”, because no one would. “I’m sorry I yelled. It's...”

"I know. Fire Nation."

" _No_. I - Not that."

Jyn nodded abruptly, rubbing her neck. For the first time, he saw it was bare. That distracted him. “Your necklace…”

“My mother gave it to me before she was killed,” Jyn said, unfolding slightly, “She tried to stop Krennic – the Director, the man in white – and he put a lightning bolt through her heart. He was coming to take us away after we escaped Coruscant. Dead mothers. Dead parents. We have that in common, don’t we?”

Sacrifice. A mother's sacrifice. Tentatively, he turned himself around, leaning against the kyber.

“My mother was killed during a raid,” he told her, eyes on the walls, “I… I dream of her every night, and I could heal her this time, that I was fast enough to find someone…”

“Cassian.” He flinched automatically. “You were a child.”

“So were you.”

A flurry of emotions crossed her face. She stood now, pacing. “Yeah. I guess. Seeing's I was a hostage for my father’s good behaviour," she said, almost spitting the words. There's the fire. "Krennic…nobody went back for - the body. It was just…lying there, on the beach. Nobody burnt it. Now she’s trapped somewhere, under the ocean, forever. The necklace, too.. when Bodhi and me ran.”

Her voice choked out, like she was dredging it up from somewhere, and it caught on her throat. It was an action so familiar. He stepped closer.

“The Water Tribe buries our dead in the sea." She turned, raising her chin at his approach, but did not back away. “We would say she’s free now, she’s found her way to the Spirit World.”

Jyn’s eyes were glassy. “She would’ve liked that. She always wanted to learn about other Nations… I wish…” She trailed off, running her fingers across the kyber crystals on the wall. He saw tension gather in her jaw. “And now my father’s dead. That was what kept me going, all those years, even when he used me. Because I was told that it would be over, then.”

His throat closed, but he would not cower under her anger. Not all of it was for him. And of that, he understood. “Things would never have gone back to normal. Not for any of us.”

Jyn looked up at him. Then her shoulders dropped, her mouth softening. In a quiet voice, “Your family… What were their names?”

Voice barely above a whisper, he said, “Yulissa, my mother. Raf, my father. Ysabel and Juana, my little sisters.”

He thought of the temple, the fortune-teller, the flowers and sweets they had bought. He had killed her father then, already. She said, “If there had been no War…” 

“I don't know,” Cassian told her, “But I don’t want to die like this, either.”

 _The net is cast by your own hand._ What could make it all worthwhile? What was the point of him, now? Jyn stepped towards him. Her blouse had been ripped by the explosion, exposing the web of scars. Slowly, uncertainly, he reached out. Jyn let him. His fingers touched the uneven, scarred skin of her shoulder. It rippled under his skin like water. He felt her lean into his touch, relaxing inch by inch until her body seemed to sink into the gentleness. His thumb stroked her elbow.

“I wanted it to be over,” Jyn breathed, “I thought he was all I had. The only thing that made it worthwhile. After Saw, after fighting for the cause, I -”

Red and blue. Two people in a crystal catacomb, searching in the darkness for each other. Jyn. A firebender. A friend. A member of his family. His perplexing, infuriating, green-eyed riddle. “You could choose something else,” he said, his face inches from her, “But you have to know that, too.”

My mirror.

Her breath was warm on his cheek. She seemed to lean. His fingers moved up her shoulder –

The rock of the cave burst outwards, earthbent by the King’s elite guards. The man in white stepped inside, dragging Bodhi behind him. “My, what a gathering we have here.”

The earthbenders bent the kyber crystals around Cassian and Bodhi, enclosing them in place. They struggled helplessly. Jyn moved to strike, but Krennic shook a finger. “Do anything and they die.”

How dare he. How _dare_ he. “You were going to kill my father,” she spat.

“And now he’s dead, no thanks to the Rebels. So we all got what we wanted.”

She reared back, feeling Cassian’s dark eyes boring into the back of her head.

“He passed you information,” Krennic hissed, circling her. “What did he tell you?” When she was silent, he snapped, “Choke the Earth Kingdom one.”

Bodhi gasped. The crystal began to tighten around his throat. “He didn’t say anything the rebels hadn’t already found out!” Jyn cried, “Just that the Death Star exists, that it has to be destroyed! He didn’t even say what it was!”

The crystal tightened. “Think very carefully about what you’re saying…”

“It’s the truth, I swear it! Take me, take me instead!”

She looked into those icy blue eyes, the mania. “Oh? You? What can you offer?”

And now, at last, Jyn understood what it meant for love to be a weapon, to make someone bleed. She would have preferred the Fire Lord, no Krennic, had killed her that day on the black sand of Lah’mu.

She could hear the sick, rasping breathing of Vader, the Dark Lord of Fire, from the gap in the wall. Krennic was Vader’s tool, and she his. “Enough of this,” Vader said, “She has already chosen the very people who discarded her. Our only prize is the Avatar. Kill the Earth Kingdom savage.”

“No! No, I haven’t chosen!” Jyn yelled. Her voice shook.

“Final answer?” Krennic said, raising a hand. Bodhi’s eyes bulged as his throat began to close.

“Jyn, don’t do it,” he rasped, “Let me die. We’re Rebels Jyn, we’re Rebels now.”

Her North Star, her third sun. Bodhi would never forgive her.

She knelt on the ground, pressing her head to the rock. “I can offer you a chance to save yourself,” she said, choking on her own shame. “It’s the truth. I will join you. I will tell the Fire Lord myself. I’ll tell him of my father’s betrayal, that you had no hand in. Just… just let me bring Bodhi with me. Don’t lay a hand on him.”

Krennic smiled. “Get up, girl. You’re coming with me.”

She followed him and Vader through the passageway into the cavern. She could help it; she looked back. Cassian’s eyes were closed. And Bodhi… Bodhi turned his face away.

From the passageway bent in the wall, Cassian could hear the sounds of battle raging. But more importantly, he could feel water in the air. Cool and powerful. He focused on that. Only that.

Cassian exhaled.

The crystals around him froze. Flexing his arms and legs, he shattered the prison. Kyber crystals rained around him. He gripped one, sliding into his pocket without thinking. “I’m going to get Luke and Leia,” he told Bodhi.

 _Jyn_.

He ran into a vast underground, ancient courtyard. Water poured down from a gap in the ceiling, from which he could see the paper-thin crescent Moon. The water fell down into some kind of underground river. Kyber crystals glowed all over the walls. Vader and the twins battled there, fire meeting air, earth, and water. He saw Jyn and Krennic watching. Soldiers were pouring into the Catacombs, through another passageway.

Cassian bent a huge wave, smashing them aside. The water swirled in an arc around his ankles, suspended over the ground by sheer force of power. With fluid motions, he formed tentacles from the water wheel. The soldiers sent off rock-fists, which he crushed with each extra limb.

Krennic snapped at his fingers at Jyn. Fire poured down from her fingers, forming two long fiery whips. Just like his own bending. With a snap, she sliced straight through the water.

Inhaling, Cassian pooled the water over his feet, his legs, his torso, covering himself with watery armour. He bent his own long water sleeves. Surging upwards, his water arms met her whips. They crashed into each other, throwing steam into the air. Jyn’s bending was weak, a showy waste of power. She was better than that. Water and fire met, over and over.

She tried to look at him. But Cassian would not. Not now.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Vader didn’t hesitate, throwing his hands together in a clap that sent off a huge shockwave of fire. Luke dug his heels in, pushing outwards. A rock wall formed upwards from the ground. The fire crashed into it. Rock shattered. Luke was thrown back, hissing as the rock cut his cheek.

Leia darted around the broken barrier. Bending as she ran, she pulled a huge wave of water from the underground river. The wave smashed onto Vader. He blocked it with a fiery strike. Leia kept bending. The stream curved, glancing off Vader’s block. It crashed back down. Extending his arms, Vader bent a huge wave of fire.

Smoke filled the catacomb.

He and Leia pressed back to back. The vibrations echoed through the rock, across their seismic sense. Vader was moving, Vader was running, he disappeared from the earth –

Their heads snapped around. Vader leapt out from the smoke. He fired off two quick punches. As one, they bent a water shield. The fire thudded across its surface. Vader landed on the lip of a rock tower. Together, they stomped. A shockwave cut across the catacomb, splintering straight up the tower. Vader plunged, landing cat-like. Without hesitating, each twin took off. Wind clung to them, gathering into a storm. They loosed it.

A great gust knocked Vader down. Fire poured from Vader’s feet, cutting across them as he stood. The twins jumped upwards with airbending, clinging to one of the stalactites. Vader slammed his hands together.

A burst of flame, strong as a bomb, fired off. Panicked, they pulled the kyber crystals around, forming armour. It shattered beneath the fire. Leia cried out, trying to shield herself. It was only with some quick airbending that they softened their fall. Even so, they hit the ground hard. Broken kyber rained down around them. Luke gasped, feeling something break, digging painfully into his lung. Leia made a choked, painful sound, her hair coming out of its braid.

“Your teachers have taught you well. But you are not the Avatar, yet,” Vader said, in that awful voice. This man who had murdered their father, who had desecrated their mother’s tomb, who was here to destroy the Earth Kingdom at last. Luke hated him, like he had never hated anyone before.

Vader pulled his arms back. Fire roared from his hands. It rocketed him towards them, shooting out like an arrow. _It doesn’t work like that,_ Jyn had said once.

Jyn was nothing compared to Vader.

They charged forward, accelerating with airbending. They were going to collide, any moment now… _Wait_ , he heard Leia scream in his head, _not yet –_

 _Closer_ , he called back.

**_Now!_ **

They peeled apart, sliding along Vader’s side. Time seemed to dilate. Luke could feel Vader’s shock as they dodged. One of the very first airbending moves Enfys had ever taught. The one element that always bested them. Vader’s eyes – blue eyes, Vader had blue eyes – followed them as they curved right past.

The twins landed. Seismic sense spread out across the earth. They bent. Rock shot out behind them, throwing Vader across the catacomb. For a brief moment, it seemed they'd got him. Then the monster got to his feet. He brushed the dirt from his cape with an amused flick.

“Impressive. Most impressive. But your destiny lies with me,” Vader said. Soldiers were pouring down from the walls. He and Leia stood, battered and bleeding, raising their arms in a fighting stance.

With two punches straight down, they shattered the ground around them. Soldiers were thrown off balance. But Vader leapt, landing at the mouth of the passageway they’d made. He stood, almost lazily, gazing down at them."You are beaten. It is useless to resist. Do not allow yourselves to be destroyed, as Obi Wan did."

Fire and earth were flung from every direction. Leia pulled water to block. The assault crashed into her, throwing her backwards. “There’s too many,” Leia whispered.

There was a wordless cry as the soldiers bent earth around Cassian. He was trapped in a kyber prison. They saw Cassian struggling. "Run!" he yelled at them, "Get out of here!"

“We can do it, we can…”

“Luke.” He looked at her. Leia flicked her wrists upwards. The kyber grew, forming a crystal tent around them. The world went silent. Luke could hear himself breathing in raggedly. They stared at each other, bleeding and burnt. Leia swallowed, her hair hanging in a mess around her shoulders. “We need to open the last chakra. We need the Avatar State.”

“You can’t ask me to let go.”

Aunt Beru, Uncle Owen, Han, Cassian, Ben, Enfys, Bodhi, Baze, Chirrut, Jyn, Hera, Kanan, Luminara, Rex, so many people – none of them was untethered. Perhaps Master Yoda, eating insects and frogs in a swamp, could belong to nobody, but he could not. If he was too much like his father, then so be it. He would not stop loving these people.

He could feel Cassian struggling outside. Where was Bodhi? Jyn had, had gone over…

Leia shook her head. She grabbed his face, turning it back towards her. “Luke, he’ll die anyways if we can’t unlock it,” she said thickly.

And then it came to him. Luminara, in the swamp, at the beginning of spring – that those who died were not lost to them. The intense love of the Water Tribes, of the Air Nomads, who lived in the material world. Who understood the natural cycles of death and rebirth. Could he watch them die? No, that was wrong.

He grasped her hands. “Love is a form of energy,” he told her, “We can always find them…they’ll always be with us.”

Leia tightened her fingers around his. The material world fell away. There, was the Avatar Spirit, holding a globe between its hands. On the pathway of a thousand stars, they reached forward. “ _Always_.”

The kyber crystal tent shattered.

The Avatar rose up, eyes ablaze, in a pillar of blinding light. A being, a thousand lifetimes old, faced Vader. Only a man, and they had fought men before. Every rock, every drop of water, every breath taken, every heartbeat – they were the planet, breathing, living, understanding itself.

We knew ourselves. We were Mace, T’ra Saa, Revan, Nomi, Atris, Kerra, Kothos, Satele, on and on and on, a thousand lifetimes, a thousand foes we had vanquished.

We were Luke, and we were Leia.

Their feet touched down upon the ledge before Vader, stories off the ground. They raised their hands. In a thousand voices, their words echoed across the Catacombs. “This ends now!”

And Vader’s gloved hands seized theirs, burning through skin, hot as the sun. “You did not yet understand your importance. Join me, and I will teach you to master fire - together, we can bring end this destructive conflict, and bring order to the world!"

The pain was unbearable. Their skin melted at his touch. But they had faced evil before, had killed and imprisoned and sent tumbling into the void. Evil they could fight. "Never. We will never join you."

"Obi Wan never told you the truth about your father.”

“He did. He told us you killed him.”

Behind the red-film of the mask, Vader’s blue eyes flickered. “No. _I_ am your father.”

No.

"That's impossible!"

_No._

"You know it to be true!"

Mother's grave, the burning hands on Padmé's throat, Obi Wan, Tython, their hands were burning, burning beneath Vader's power, blue eyes, his eyes -

“Join me, and together we can rule the world as father and child.”

**_No._ **

Father, father, father. You are your father’s child. Vader’s mask with their face. A great and terrible lie, the frog at the bottom of the well, the terrible secret of the vast ocean, Jedha, Mon Cala, crumbling into a thousand shards, and in that moment, to know –

The Avatar fell.

“No!” Someone was screaming, and it was him. He heard Jyn scream too.

The twins’ broken bodies lay on the courtyard floor.

Jyn placed her hand on his rock cage. Nobody was watching them. Her fingers began to glow. He looked into her green eyes. _Who are you?_ Jyn, who had thrown their fight, who had looked back at him, pleading. Jyn, who had gone with Krennic to save Bodhi’s life. Jyn, who had fallen somewhere he could never reach. The rock shattered beneath her hands.

“Go,” she breathed, “Go now! Before it’s too late to save them!”

Cassian bent the river water around him. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the tears were gone. Cassian bent a wave, cresting atop it. It swept through the soldiers, Krennic, Vader, more violent and cruel than anything he had ever created, until he reached the twins. He dropped down beside the bodies. Leia’s hair had come loose, haloed around her still face. He cradled them. Juana, Ysabel, Leia, Luke…

Cassian was not the strongest man, but he found he could lift them easily. Luke, he swung over his back, Leia in his arms. They were too light. Vader reached out, roaring at the soldiers, _stop him!_ Vader’s children. Luke and Leia.

With a wave, he pulled a glittering stream around himself. The water spout rose into the air, carrying them higher, higher. Vader howled with fury. The stream carried them through the gap in the ceiling. They burst into the night sky, studded with a thousand uncaring stars.

And waiting there was Enfys, with the sky bison.

Cassian dropped onto the bison’s furry back. They took to the air. Wind whipped around them. He laid them down in the saddle. Enfys crawled towards him.

“Cassian, are they…” Enfys whispered, her voice breaking. She touched Luke’s cheek, and sobbed. Her tears fell on their still, unmoving faces.

He pressed his fingers to their necks. There was no pulse.

Reaching upwards, he unfastened the necklace carrying the vials of Spirit Water. Uncorking them, he bent the water out. Two glistening beads swirled on his palms. Leia’s smile as she had bent water with him at the Pole. Luke when they had faced the Unagi. The North Pole, the desert, the swamp, Jedha, every adventure they had ever had together. All of them, in the house in Mon Cala, burning below. Four Nations, in spite of the way the world was.

Cassian pressed his hands to their hearts.

The Spirit Water coursed through them, finding their broken nerves, bones, their hearts, please, please, give me something stronger than death or duty, passion or rage, _anything_ …

Their hearts did not beat.

He touched their lips. In the darkness of the night sky, he recalled Jyn's words. A coin in the mouth, for the boatman. Salt, to annoit the body. An offering, if you could. But Cassian had nothing left to give, to these children of Earth and Fire.

Something, half a sob, half a scream, burst from him then.

The twins gasped. Their eyes fluttered open, meeting his.

“Cassian,” Leia breathed. He pulled them into his arms. Leia smiled, dazed, then her eyes closed. They slid back into unconsciousness. Beneath his hands, their heartbeats, steady and true.

Luke’s right hand, and Leia’s left, were covered by a horrific burn. He would have to heal it, later, when they reached the Falcon. Vader’s mark. Their father.

Below, Mon Cala burned. Fire Nation troops marched in its streets. The Earth Kingdom had fallen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~Please don't kill me I swear this fic has a happy ending~~
> 
> That's a wrap on Book Two! I'll be taking a week break, so next update for Book Three, should come on Monday. Comments are always appreciated.


	30. Book Three: Rebirth I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder that Winter's name is "Amihan" in this fic.

_Water. Earth. Fire. Air._

_Mon Cala has fallen. The Fire Nation stands on the brink of victory. When the ultimate weapon, the Death Star is completed, it will spell certain doom for the world._

_Han Solo lies in the clutches of Jabba the Hutt.  
_

_With the world-shattering revelation of their parentage, Luke and Leia must decide what to do, in order to save the world._

_n the Fire Nation, Jyn Erso and Bodhi Rook at last choose their destiny..._

Baze could hardly believe his eyes when the sky bison drew up to the side of the Falcon. Cassian’s clothes were burnt. His coat hung off his shoulders in rags. Cassian stared at them, his face blank, as though he were seeing them for the first time. Slowly, the smile faded from Chirrut’s face at the growing silence.

He watched Cassian reach behind him and pull something from the saddle. It’s Luke, still and pale, his clothes tattered. Baze wanted to be sick when he saw Luke’s right hand. Horrifically burnt, almost black, the skin all peeled off. Cassian placed Leia beside Luke. She was much in the same condition, but instead her left hand was the one burnt. If their chests did not minutely rise and fall, they would look –

“Baze?” Chirrut hissed, “Baze, what’s happening?”

“Luke and Leia, they look terrible,” he managed. He couldn’t speak the word. He didn’t know if anyone there could handle it. Threepio fluttered over to his mistress, pecking her frantically as though to rouse her. “Stop that,” Cassian said tiredly, “She’s…”

The sentence trailed off.

Enfys jumped down from the sky bison’s head. Her eyes were red-rimmed. She spoke something in an Air Nomad language to the bison. It peeled away from the ship with a mournful wail.

Nobody touched each other. A joyous reunion seemed wrong. The burning buildings of Mon Cala glowed red on the black water. Baze had lost Jedha long ago, had watched it burn only months before, and his grief was carried away on the wind like smoke. Nothing ever seemed to change.

“Cassian, are you alright?” he asked. Cassian’s dark eyes settled on him, before flicking towards the water. Always so put together, they seemed haunted now. Freedom could be its own curse. “Cassian, what happened? Where’s Jyn and Bodhi?”

Cassian scooped up Leia’s body – Leia, Baze reminded himself, she was alive, she was not a corpse, but then why –

“Cassian?”

“Later,” Cassian murmured, “I need to keep healing them.”

He disappeared into the hold. After a moment, Enfys dragged Luke in the same direction. Chirrut, using his cane to navigate, clambered down after them.

That left Baze alone on the deck with Lando. He stepped towards the younger man. Lando kept the Falcon skimming alongside General Ackbar’s ships. They were arcing around Mon Cala, heading down the Southern coast of the Earth Kingdom. They watched Mon Cala burn. “Seen something like this before?” Baze said.

Lando shuddered. “Yeah. Bespin. The Fire Nation’s occupied it. First the Western City, now the East… soon there’ll be no more Air Nomad places.”

His hands flexed on the engine and the wheel. “I made a bad call.”

Baze glanced over at the hold. “I think we all did.”

“So now what?”

Baze closed his eyes for a moment. He thought of how he had held Chirrut back as the Holy Temple was sacked. The way Chirrut had screamed. “You wake up. You get them up. You go to the market and see if there’s something to eat. If nothing else, you keep them alive. And you kill some stormtroopers, if you can,” he added, smiling with all teeth.

“You never ask yourself, what’s the damn point?”

“There's nothing down that road,” Baze said, and he thought of the house in Mon Cala. He clapped Lando on the back, tried to summon something, anything, to hold them all together. “When you need rest, call me. I’ll take your shift.”

Lando said nothing. But the hard line of his shoulders seemed to ease.

Vader stood on the deck of the _Executor_ , watching the lightning and water.

Both blue things, though under the crackling flash, the discharge of electricity, the water appeared white as snow. He had spent enough time at sea to hate its blue as much as the piercing blue of the lightning. It was its own endless desert. Blue, though, blue as the ocean-man who had carried the bodies away.

His breath rasped against the metal of his helmet. It dug painfully into the ruined scar tissue that covered his body. The power of waterbenders, like the treacherous one in the Crystal Catacombs, was miraculous. But even it could not return him to what he had been. Physically. He would never return to what he had been, mentally.

Nor could it, or any other, return the dead to life, the cruellest trick Sidious had promised.

Vader could not close his hands properly, instead resting them uncomfortably upon the railing. Like all nights, he'd woken from the same dream, always the same dream. Obi Wan, Padmé, in the river of lava. And now, a third figure. Somehow, before the dream ended, the ocean-man appeared. He met Vader's gaze as he carried them away. Ah.

_I lost._

It was slipping through his fingers like smoke and shadow. He looked out towards the growing thin line of the Fire Nation, the trace of dragon’s tears, forming islands. Ugly, ragged, in the storm.

An ocean of lightning.

The days passed like a dream. Cassian bent water, healing every broken bone he could find, closing wounds and gashes. He spent hours working on their hands. The nerves inside felt dead. Cassian ended every session light-headed. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t. After, he would place his glowing hands over their hearts. He felt the steady beating of their pulse beneath his hands, that those desperate moments as Mon Cala burned had been real.

But the twins remained still and sleeping.

Once, when Chirrut was helping him, the older man’s hand brushed against Luke’s damaged one. _Oh, by the Moon…_ He tried to remove Chirrut’s fingers, but his grip was vicelike.

“What is this? Is this… Does Leia have one too?”

Chirrut was already scrambling for Leia’s hands. Cassian felt caught. If he explained the burned hands, then he had to explain everything. The duel in the Catacombs, Vader’s words, Krennic’s deal, Jyn and Bodhi, almost killing Galen – and Cassian didn’t know where to begin. How to find the words. It all had been so fast. And it had begun the moment he had tried to kill Galen Erso. The lie bubbled in his throat –

“Cassian, what happened in Mon Cala?”

“It’s…”

“Don’t say it’s nothing,” Chirrut said sharply, a harshness he had never seen in the other, “They can barely even move their fingers.” There was a pause. “Can they still bend?”

“It’s fine, it’s fine!” Cassian insisted, even as he felt sick, he needed to talk to Jyn, the only person who was there, who would understand…

But Jyn was gone. “It’s only…”

“Only _what?_ ”

“Cassian.”

They both turned to the sound of Enfys’ voice. Her eyes fell on Luke’s still face, before they raised to the two men. “We’ve made contact with the Southern fleet. They want to talk to you.”

“Later,” he told Chirrut. “I’ll explain later.”

Chirrut’s anger seemed to escape then. He bowed his head, running his fingers over and over Luke and Leia’s hands, their faces, searching for something, anything.

But the twins remained still and sleeping.

Jyn watched the full Moon as the ship drew closer to Coruscant. She thought of the house in Mon Cala. Luke, Leia, Chirrut and Baze, Enfys, Han…

Cassian.

She heard her guard clear her throat behind her. Krennic had assigned some intelligence operative to keep her on a tight leash. Jyn had been surprised to see not only another woman, but one with warm brown skin and black hair pinned neatly away. The Fire Nation was not a place for women to excel in power, much less for foreigners. Her name, when Krennic had told her, preening at his own brilliance, made it all clear.

Iden Versio. Like Jyn, the child of high-ranking Fire Nation military. Her mother had been from the Earth Kingdom, married before the War began. But, Jyn considered, the War had not created all this. _Do you hate us?_ Bodhi had asked. It had been a part of her people, before she had been alive. Jyn had supped from this well, too. She had loved Bodhi, and Saw, dead, dead Saw beneath the ruins of Jedha, but she had never understood them in a way that did not relate to herself.

Iden had a face like many she'd seen in Mon Cala. It stuck out like the bright face of the Moon in the sky, in this ship. Yet Iden only straightened her back and nodded at everything Krennic told her to do. 

Versio coughed again. She heard the other woman fiddling with the throwing knives on her person. “Are you planning on freezing out here?”

Jyn looked at her. “I want to see Bodhi,” she said coldly. "I want to see him _now._ "

Versio sighed. “The answer, Erso, is still no.”

Jyn scowled, tightening her grip on the railing. She watched the old black basalt buildings draw closer, strange and unfamiliar.

Cassian went through the motions mechanically. He saw people he had known from his childhood, as well as distant cousins, but he did not speak to them. The distance had been growing for years, but they were even more guarded now. Cassian was the one who gone the deepest into the other world of the other Nations, after all.

He could tell them about deserts of yellow sand as far as the eye can see. He could tell them about Spirit creatures and the Moon fading from the sky. He could tell them about swamps haunted by the past, present, and future, about men who walked in fire, about a rain-swept mountain and an empty pyre burning. He could tell them about a pale-skinned woman with green eyes.

But they didn’t know what these things were.

He listened to plans to steal a Fire Nation cruiser, so they can increase their pace. Plans for the Day of Black Sun. Taking refuge in the Fire Nation, the last place anyone would look. His voice sounded so far away as he gave his own advice and opinions. Do they know that Jyn and Bodhi are gone, as good as dead, that Luke and Leia had died?

People should know. Someone should care.

“We need to rescue Han from Jabba,” Cassian said. He could sense the shock of his friends. _We have to go,_ he was always saying.

He felt Enfys, hesitantly, squeeze his fingers in support. It was not enough. But he squeezed back, all the same.

“I can help with that,” Lando said, “I’m responsible.”

The ships travelled on. And his Chief and her lover turn to him and asked, “Where is the Avatar? Where is our daughter?”

Cassian stared at them. Then he gestured, as politely as he could, for them to follow him into the Falcon’s hold. Chief Breha gave a wordless cry when she saw Leia. Bail’s face was stricken as he touched her face. “What happened?”

“Vader.”

There. On their faces, he saw. “It’s true, isn’t it,” Cassian said. “He’s their father.”

They exchanged a look, of five thousand nights of secrets. “Captain Andor -”

_“Is it true?”_

Bail nodded. Cassian sank down onto the floor of the hold, covering his face with his hands. “There was this poison,” he breathed, “And you, Obi Wan, all of them, let them leave, you let them believe...”

In the great central artery that leads to the royal Palace, crowds gathered. Coruscant was a thrumming city built in the great caldera of an extinct volcano. Thousands of years of molten rock had created layer upon layers. On the very top sat the Imperial Palace. Do these crowds know that their Fire Lord has never ventured down to the levels, in the very gut of the old volcano?

They thronged the street decorated with statues of former Fire Lords, up to the grand steps of the colonnaded palace. Banners flew. T _he Earth Kingdom has been conquered! The savage rebels have lost!_ The official yelled to the roaring crowd.

_Mon Cala has fallen! The great walls have been brought down! Your great Lord Vader faced the Avatar, and the Avatar fell! Long live your Fire Lord, eternal!_

Somewhere, Bodhi was being led away in chains. I saved you, she thought. I saved you, didn't I?

Jyn had been ushered quickly into the Palace, thrust a change of clothes for her still tattered Earth Kingdom wear. They were a noblewomen’s clothes. Jyn pulled on the wine-red silk cloth that fell to her ankles, belting and pinning it at the shoulders and waist. It exposed her scarred and muscled arms, but she imagined the Fire Lord enjoyed her humiliation. Jyn pinned the matching veil to the top of her head, letting it fall over her shoulders and down her back. She was led into the throne room atrium.

Krennic, in a fresh white set and cape, strode in. “Do not ruin this for me,” he hissed.

Together, they pushed aside the curtain and stepped into the throne room. Her skin felt clammy. Her hands threatened to tighten into fists, but she made them lie flat against her sides. It would be over, soon. They walked past the columns, carved with flames at the top. Before them was a huge wall of fire, and then the black throne. Following Krennic’s lead, Jyn knelt and pressed her forehead to the ground. Her exposed skin itched. From the flames, came a soft chuckle.

Then, the voice, “Rise, Director Krennic and… _Jyn_. Jyn Erso.”

Jyn raised her head, and readied herself to die. There, the Fire Lord. Palpatine, the god-king that ruled with an iron fist. His pale face horribly scarred and twisted, as though the skin itself were melting off. Those terrible yellow eyes bored into hers. “Director…you have ensured that the rebel issue regarding the Death Star has been…taken care of.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

Jyn knelt beneath that reptilian gaze and could not breathe. She heard her name. “Yes, my Lord,” she said, “There is no one who knows the truth of the Death Star. My father tried to warn the rebels, but they know nothing of what it is. Only that it exists.”

“Still,” the Fire Lord said, “That could be quite dangerous… But I have been informed that the Avatar is… _dead_.”

Jyn was trembling. Her chest hurt. _Water from the Spirit Oasis_ , Cassian had once said. _It has special healing properties._

“Unless, that is not true?”

Jyn looked at the Fire Lord. Behind him stood Vader now. Luke and Leia’s father. Monster. “The Avatar is dead, forever,” she told him.

She watched Vader stagger, just a fraction, and felt no pity.

It was sunset when the message from the Fire Nation came.

They were scheduled to capture the Fire Nation cruiser the next morning. At great cost, they had abandoned most of the Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom boats. It felt like another cut, deeper and more sorrowful, to watch. He remembered his mother and father, both craftspeople, weaving sails. One day you will do this too, his father had told him, and we’ll sail and watch the Southern Lights on the water.

He watched the ocean swallow them. The ocean took, and the ocean gave, washing away Jyn Erso’s necklace, her mother, his family, his whole culture.

They kept the Falcon. It would be needed for later. Chewie would never have allowed it, anyways. And Han wasn’t dead. He wasn’t.

Luke and Leia lay, wrapped in blankets, on the ground. Still and cold. Breha spooned porridge into their lips with a long spoon. Cassian sat by the fire, listening to the multitude of languages swirling. He felt something poke his side. Lando, holding food. Nodding gratefully, Cassian took the bowl and ate mechanically.

Behind him, Kay made a noise.

“Cassian, look,” Enfys said.

A messenger bird was flying over the horizon, a scroll tied to its back. They watched it grow larger and swoop towards a familiar face. Evaan Verlaine, Cassian recalled. The day of the storm, the story he had told. He felt a sudden hot flush at his past advice. Evaan unfurled the message. Several emotions crossed her face, before settling on disbelief. She handed it over to Draven, a pale-faced man, half Southern Earth Kingdom.

“It’s from Mon Mothma,” he said to the assembled group, “The Fire Nation made a declaration earlier today.”

His eyes met Cassian’s. “They’re saying the Avatar was killed at Mon Cala. The Avatar Cycle was ended, permanently.”

Every face turned to look at him. Luke and Leia, deep in a coma. Something was going to break and shatter, when they awoke, and he didn't know how to fix it. He had to say something, but he couldn’t…

He didn't think he _could_ fix it.

Cassian got to his feet and walked away from the shore. There was the sound of four people following. There should have been more. Luke and Leia, Han. Bodhi. And Jyn. He stopped by the twins’ sleeping forms. He imagined Leia awake, talking to her as they always had as children. What would she say, to him? _Everyone needs to know what happened._

 _So just tell them_ , she would say.

_But I don’t know how to._

_Then go slow. One thing at a time._

_It's hard. I don't want them to..._

_So is everything. Nothing’s ever easy._

Courage. There are people who love you enough stay, Jyn had told him once.

He just had to be brave enough to believe it too.

In the end, Cassian told them everything. The missions, Galen Erso, the crystal Catacombs, the impossible choice, Jyn’s betrayal, Vader’s proclamation, the twins’ death, Jyn saving him. And the twin’s rebirth.

Chirrut stood and walked away. Baze went after him. Cassian heard yelling. Lando told him how sorry he was, he meant well, but it felt hollow. It echoed across a yawning gulf within their sorry group, the threads intertwining between all of them and Luke and Leia, them and Jyn. Him and Jyn.

Only Enfys stayed beside him. “Cassian?”

He looked at her. “What will they do, now?”

Cassian thought of how Luke spoke of Anakin Skywalker. There was a difference, he understood, between pity and forgiveness. “I don’t know.”

Cassian settled himself down in the tiny quarters of the stolen Fire Nation cruiser. The room was too metal, too red for his liking. At least Chirrut could see in it. He unshouldered his pack, letting it drop onto the mattress.

It hit the fabric, splitting open after so many months weighed down. “Oh,” he said in surprise.

The bone dagger was the first thing he picked up. _Trust goes both ways._ He spun the blade slowly between his fingers.

Burnt rope from the North Pole. The star charts. _Star-taker. Jyn is a star name._ The round tip of her finger forming the constellation. She had never told him which star. The mannok tile from the Dejarik board in Mon Cala. Jyn’s voice in the spring warmth, whispering, _good morning._ The tile from the temple fortune-teller.

He shrugged his burnt coat off. There were dried blood splatters on it. It had never been anything fancy, but it had been something he made with his own hands, serving him well, mark of his heritage. And now the three long months across the Earth Kingdom.

There was a heavier thump as he dropped the coat on the mattress.

Bewildered, he fumbled in the pocket of the coat. It was unmistakable. Inside, unconsciously, he had pocketed a shard of kyber. Parts of it were cracked from the journey. Kyber from the Crystal Catacombs. Jyn’s eyes in the darkness. Her warm breath on his cheek. In the darkness, the kyber flickered green.

It swept over him like a wave, as he stood over the pack full of memories.

 _“Oh,”_ he repeated.

It was only a matter of time before they passed another Fire Nation ship. Only the most light-skinned, which included him, were on deck, dressed in Fire Nation armour. The other ship drew up beside them, extending a metal gangplank to cross over. Cassian could feel Chirrut and Enfys waiting just out of sight. Draven smoothly spun their cover story. The Captain in charge nodded along. All was going well.

Then he heard the faintest murmur of one of the soldiers: “Sir, a Fire Nation ship was stolen by Water Tribe barbarians recently, I think it's this -”

“They know!” Chirrut shouted.

His hand struck the deck. The metal screeched, forming a rift, crumpling the gangplank. The soldiers screamed as they fell into the sea. Cassian didn’t have time to gape at Chirrut’s power. He could feel the ocean thundering around their vessel. He sank into a lunge, pulling his hands upwards. A wave peeled out of the sea. Cassian made a slicing movement.

The wave crashed into the other ship, nearly capsizing it. The engines on their ship fired up. They began to move away. Cassian leapt down, freezing the waves into a board beneath his feet. He surfed towards the ship, bending a huge current. It smashed into the stern, tearing through the metal.

Propelling himself upwards on a water spout, Cassian knocked the soldiers on deck aside. He had to get to the communications room. Hopefully this ship was laid out the same as theirs. He wished Jyn or were here. They would know.

But they were gone.

The water crashed through the equipment. Messenger hawks were set free. _I'm sorry,_ he thought, and killed them quick and painlessly. Finished, Cassian ran across the deck. Their ship was getting too far away –

“Cassian! Jump!”

Enfys soared past on her glider. Cassian leapt. He caught the back of her glider. Enfys grunted, adjusting herself to the added weight. They flew clumsily back to the ship. Enfys dropped him down on the deck with a thud. Cassian winced. “That’s what you get for going off by yourself!” she snapped, shouldering her staff and disappearing into the hold.

He followed after her, towards the twins’ room. Amihan was sitting beside Leia. She drew a blade at the door opening. Seeing them, she lowered the dagger and nodded. He nodded back. Amihan was carefully snipping Leia’s hair. Her white hair was elegantly braided, stark against her tan skin. He sat down beside Luke, checking with a quick press of his fingers for a pulse. Enfys joined him, sitting silently. She ran her fingers over and over his burnt hand.

“He has blue eyes.”

Cassian and Enfys looked up sharply. “He woke up?”

Amihan shook her head, her expression still shuttered. They were both spies. Two people, playing role-selves back and forth at each other, unable to connect. “I peeled back their eyelids, to check their state.”

Cassian had done that once, in the early days, hoping the pupils would dilate under the light. But their eyes saw nothing, their minds still deep somewhere else. “Yes,” he said quietly, “He has blue eyes. Many people in the Earth Kingdom do.”

Amihan's face didn't twitch as she ran oil through Leia's locks. "I heard Fire Nation people all have strange eye colours. Monsters with yellow eyes.”

"If they have yellow, it's usually flecks, mixed with another colour -" he stopped at Amihan's and Enfys' expressions. "If you've met enough people -"

"I hope I never meet enough." Amihan turned her face away, expression cold as the deepest winter. _Me too,_ he wanted to say. But that was a half-truth. "There are rumours that Lord Vader has yellow eyes." 

It clicked together, like links on a chain. "You were eavesdropping." 

She said nothing. He'd been careless. 

"You know."

Amihan’s hands stilled. For a brief moment, her face spasmed. She closed her eyes, digging her palms into her skirt. "She’s Vader daughter.”

Leia’s face was so still, her brown hair fanning out behind her.

“She belonged to us first,” Cassian said, gripping Leia's scarred hand. 

Amihan opened her eyes. “And the boy? Skywalker?”

“He belongs to us,” Enfys spoke up, narrowing her eyes. Amihan was silent. She touched Leia’s cheek gently, braiding her hair in the Water Tribe style.

Luke’s eyes fluttered open. His body ached. Slowly, he sat up. His head was a fog. He looked down and saw brown. He still wore his tattered brown pants from their travels in the Earth Kingdom… The Earth Kingdom. A crystal catacomb. A fall. Vader. Something about Vader. The name echoed meaningfully in his pounding head.

He focused on his body. Bandages covered part of his chest. A fall… His skin itched. Luke reached up and felt his cheeks, rubbing his hands over the long strands on his chin. He had a beard! How long had he been sleeping? And one hand felt so strange.

His right hand was covered in mottled, burnt skin. He tried flexing. His hand barely moved, slow and painful, like the skin was too tight. Where had that come from? He heard a faint noise.

Leia lay next to him on the mattress, in a thin shift. Her long hair was loose around her. Her eyelids fluttered. Relief filled him as she sat up and groaned. Her left hand, like his right, was mottled by burns. “What’s going on?” she said, clutching her head.

The mattress was red. Luke looked around. Fire Nation tapestries hung all over the metal walls. _Join me…_ “We’ve been captured,” he said tightly. Leia paled.

They struggled to their feet. The door, surprisingly, was unlocked. The floor beneath them rocked very slightly. A ship. Arms wrapped around each other for support, they shuffled slowly through the metal hallways. Then, a shout: “Where did they go?”

They ran.

Luke scrambled up a stairway, pulling Leia to her feet as they burst onto the deck –

And there was Cassian, in a red Fire Nation cloak, feeding Artoo. Cassian. Mon Cala. Vader. Vader. _Father_.

The world tilted on its axis as their friends crowded around. “Someone catch them!”

Luke felt the bite of hitting the metal deck. Then he returned to darkness.

Bending two streams of water from a large bowl, Cassian continued his work on healing Luke and Leia’s burnt hands. “I don’t think they’ll ever be as they were before,” he said. “You’ll have to bend even more as a team now, because of it.”

“How long were we out?” Leia whispered. Luke had said nothing since being brought back to their bedroom. His flat blue eyes disturbed Cassian.

“A few weeks. Today is the summer solstice.”

Leia’s voice shook. “We were dead, weren’t we? You brought us back.”

Cassian only nodded. Moon Healer, Resurrecter… titles that all felt false. He focused on the twins. Leia’s face was sharper. She looked older, hunted. Luke’s silence was even more chilling. Cassian continued as he filled them in on what had happened, “Leia, your…your parents are here with us.”

Leia’s frown deepened. “My _parents_ … I see. And Han?”

Cassian pulled the water back into the bowls, avoiding her gaze. “Lando and Chewie have gone to meet contacts that can get us to Jabba.”

“Did everyone make it?”

Cassian stilled. His voice, he was sure, was even. But Leia’s eyes told the real story. “Jyn… She made a choice between Bodhi’s life, and dying a rebel… And she chose Bodhi. They’re gone. They’re in the Fire Nation now.”

Luke looked up at that. Neither of them could say anything. It was a betrayal, but not in the way any of them had ever expected. Go, she had told him. Save them.

She had wanted to stay, for reasons of her own. But she had gone over to the enemy, too.

At last, Leia spoke. “And… Vader…” Luke made a pained sound. “Does… does everyone know?”

Half Fire Nation. The children of one of the greatest monsters. His friends, people he would die for. The world’s only hope for balance. The closest thing left to family.

“Only the group and some of the Chief's closest here, as far as I’ve heard,” he said at last, “Except for Han. And Bodhi, I suppose...”

He trailed off. Neither one said anything after that, and Cassian left, promising to bring food and the others soon.

He paused on the deck, looking at the full Moon. _I healed you,_ he thought, _doesn't that count for something?_ "Keep your secrets," he said aloud, "I have enough of my own." 

_There, the Seven_ Sisters, Jyn's voice in the late night. 

There were no answers to be found.

Leia listened with half an ear as Cassian described the plan. “We don’t have the full might of the Earth Kingdom behind us, but we’re working on bringing together the different rebel cells and forces for the invasion on the Day of Black Sun.”

“Our plan,” Bail began.

“It’s _Cassian’s_ plan,” Leia snapped, aware that she sounded half her age.

Bail frowned. “The Southern fleet, or what remains, has been gathering.”

And Leia could see that. There was Captain Antilles, Ress Batten, even Evaan, leading a host of warriors Leia had only vague memories of. Amihan, her dearest Tribe-sister, who stood as a still and silent protector at her right hand. Alderaan had come to repay the genocide it had experienced.

“We’ve had news from the Fire Nation,” Cassian continued, “The world believes the Avatar is gone. That will be our greatest weapon for the Day of Black Sun.”

“General Ackbar’s men will help to supplement our forces. We also have some allies in the Fire Nation. Their leader's name is Mon Mothma. There's been increasingly unrest there, War is an expensive business. It seems that she’ll take the throne -”

“When we kill the Fire Lord and Vader,” Luke finished.

There was silence on the deck. All their friends had hugged and sobbed and teared up that they were awake, but none had mentioned the elephant-mandrill in the room. Leia felt a hot, ugly fury rise up in her. The deck emptied, leaving the Organas alone. Amihan squeezed her hand briefly, reassuring, as she left.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she burst out.

“ _Mija_ , we wanted to protect you,” Breha said, placing a hand on Leia’s shoulders. “We knew that if Vader were to know you had lived, he would tear the world apart to find you. He would have imprisoned you there. No one could ever know.”

“And so, I just had to find out like _this_?”

Bail clasped her hands in his. “I… I was stupid to do it. I…I had hoped that you would never need to become involved in the real rebellion. That we would win the War before you came of age. I wanted you to be safe.”

“I could never be safe,” Leia whispered, tears in her eyes, “That was…that was selfish…and, and wrong! The whole _world’s_ at War! And I’m the _Avatar_!”

Her dad squeezed her hands, and Leia began to sob. “And we know that. We know that the world needs you, but do you know how much we need you too?”

Her mum ran her hands through Leia’s long hair. Leia remembered how she had taught Leia how to braid her hair. Those soft brown hands that only ever touched her with love. “When Padmé begged us to care for you, it was heart-breaking for us – she was our dearest friend. But you were also our miracle. My daughter. So strong and brave. I knew you had such a great destiny…”

“And it was wrong of us not to prepare you for it,” her dad finished, “But I would lie awake at night, after we had sung you to sleep, and think of how much you would suffer, like the suffering I saw in the Separatist Wars.”

“I know you love me,” Leia choked out, “But how could you not tell me? I felt so lost…like I had failed everyone. And now I’m… I’m a _murderer’s_ child.”

“No, _no_ ,” her mum said, pulling Leia into her arms. Leia sobbed as her dad joined them. She wanted to be a child again, but that was lost to her. “We’re so sorry, Leia. I am sorry for sending out my people when they were so young, in the first place. _None_ of this is your fault.”

“I wanted to protect you so badly,” her dad said, his voice shaking. “Every day I would fear they would find you, and I couldn’t breathe. I am so sorry, Leia."

He swallowed thickly. "We should have told you and prepared you. We were wrong. But no matter what, no matter who your father is, _mija_ , to us, you are our child. If you want us to be.”

Her mum kissed her forehead, “We love you more than life itself. Every day Alderaan was attacked, I thought, _as long as Leia lives_. It would be enough.”

“Oh Mamá,” Leia breathed, “I want it to stop _hurting_.”

Leia cried in the arms of her parents. She sobbed and gasped until her body felt light. In her semi-consciousness, she felt her Papa pick her up and carry her to bed.

She slept to the sounds of her parents’ soft breathing, tender and safe, for a time.

Enfys was sleepily thrust into a room by one of the Water Tribeswomen, who seemed to have a limited grasp of Basic. She didn’t begrudge that; there were plenty in her tribe who couldn’t speak it either. Couldn't speak at all. She just wished that she hadn’t been woken up in the middle of the night. Her protests died however when she saw the beautiful lady standing in the captain’s room.

Another Air Nomad. The woman was middle-aged, with brown skin and white tattoos around her eyes. Her long hair hung into two thick dreadlocked ponytails behind her head, dyed white and blue, and woven with beading. Enfys suddenly felt absolutely filthy in her tattered clothes from Mon Cala. The woman smiled, smoothening her outfit: a deep orange tunic with skirts splitting at her hips for easy movement, trousers, and bare feet. Her right arm was missing from the shoulder down, the amputation tied with a white cloth.

Politely, Enfys extended her hand, clasping her arm with the other, allowing the elder to clasp it and kiss her forehead. “I apologize for waking you,” the elder said good-naturedly, “But when I heard there was a Cloudrider on the ship, I had to meet you. My name is Shaak Ti. I come from Shili.”

Shili, the Southern Air City. Her distant kin. Enfys nodded, waiting for the woman to elaborate. “I’ve heard much about the Cloudriders and your mother. We met, once,” Shaak Ti continued, “And I know you’ve visited the Southern Air City, I came with a friend from there -”

“What’s your point?” Enfys asked. Her clothes still smelled of dirt and ash, every day she had watched Luke and Leia sleep like the dead.

Shaak Ti’s face fell. “Avatar T’ra Saa was right,” she said quietly, “We are part of this world. Sages that told us to abandon our earthly tethers, that influenced the Jedi – that power is wrong.”

“So, it’s only after the War has come for us, you finally realise?” Enfys said coldly.

The older woman looked at her for a moment. “You are different, from when I saw you once as a child. Angrier,” she observed.

Enfys drew back, her face hard as the wood of her mask. “Anger can help you survive."

“Forgiveness is the Air Nomad way,” Shaak Ti said, as though testing her.

Enfys thought of a long fall from space, as her mother’s glider had come alight under a firebender’s power. Luke and Leia, falling from the sky, according to Cassian. “Listen to yourself. You're an _Air Nomad_. The War came a long time ago. You can't detach yourself from the people who want to exterminate you.”

“No, you can't,” she said, “And for that reason, if late, I and the warriors of the Shili will be there, on the Day of Black Sun.”

Enfys nodded numbly. She made to leave the room. "Enfys?"

She paused.

"Faith, can also help you survive."

 _There is a part of you that will always remain there, and will never leave_ , Omera had said. But how true was that?

The door clattered open. It was Baze, wild-eyed. “Luke’s gone,” he said.

He felt someone shake him awake in the cool darkness of the ship. “Jyn?” he asked, his voice still raspy from sleep.

Enfys looked down at him, drawing her hand away as though shocked. Cassian sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Luke’s gone missing, he’s not on the ship,” she said, twisting her hands together. “His glider is gone.”

Outside, Cassian could hear the rain crashing onto the metal deck of the ship. She raised her hands, seeing his panic. “It’s okay, someone is out there looking, with a sky bison. An old friend of the Organas. Cassian, do not try to go out there.”

“I’m a waterbender, I can -”

_“Cassian!”_

He froze. Enfys grabbed his shoulders. “Whatever happened in Mon Cala was not your fault. You’re strong, and you’re…kinder than I think you realise. And you messed up, but what happened is not your fault and there is nothing you can do now except _trust_ , alright?”

Cassian drew back, burned. Something, bitter and vile, wanted to rise up and say, _but you don’t even fully trust me._ But that was cruel, and frightened. It took him a moment to realise that Enfys was still in the room. In a gentle voice, she said, “It’s not wrong to miss them.”

“I miss Bodhi just fine,” Cassian muttered. In conversations, it felt like they were all waiting for Bodhi’s flustered rambling, his anxious mumbling. A missed beat in the music. But there was only a great gulf where it was meant to be.

She cracked a half-smile. “Yeah, I really miss Bodhi. Spirits, I wish I had told him so.

“But what I meant,” Enfys said, tears shining in her eyes, “Is that it’s not wrong to miss Jyn.”

“Jyn betrayed us.”

Enfys touched his shoulder softly, so sympathetic it made him flinch. “Even so.”

They watched the lightning through the porthole, painting the ocean white.

Luke flew through the storm. The ocean waves crashed, threatening to pull him from the sky. This was stupid. But he couldn’t sleep. The cabin was too quiet without Leia. Leia had been there, inside his head. But even she had no answers he wanted to hear.

Vader was his father. Vader was Anakin Skywalker. It was his father who had torched the world, who had desecrated his mother’s tomb, who had captured Mon Cala. There was something prophetic, that they had awoken on the Summer Solstice, the day for fire spirits. Vader, more monster than man. Lightning flashed as Luke clung to his glider, going nowhere, only certain that he had to get away from the well-meaning looks everyone was giving.

Had Ben known? Had he been prepared to have Luke murder Vader, Anakin, to bring balance to the world?

_Join me, and together we can rule the world._

I let go. If not for Cassian, the Avatar would be gone, forever. He had failed the world, and he might still fail it again.

You were born to do this, everyone had said. Born to do _what?_ Murder his father?

A wave bore down on him.

He tried to fly up, up, up –

A torrent of water crashed down upon him. Luke cried out, swallowing water. He kicked and struggled as he was pulled under. Cold shot through, ice water filling his veins and pouring into his skull. The shock of plummeting, down, down, down into a world without air. His lungs were collapsing into a single black point –

A hand seized his and pulled him from the water. Luke was flung onto a flat surface, where he lay, choking and sputtering. By degrees, consciousness returned. He was sitting in the saddle of a sky bison. Hovering over him was a woman in a pure white robe, holding an Air Nomad staff, white as bone. Her dark skin was covered in white tattoos. Her dreadlocked hair was dyed blue and white, spiralling down to her waist. “Luke?” she said, “Luke, can you hear me?”

He coughed. “Who are you?”

“My name is Ahsoka Tano,” she said, sitting back on her heels, “I was a friend of your father’s, when he still called himself… Anakin Skywalker.”

Still hacking up water, Luke said, somewhat stupidly, “You’re an airbender.”

Ahsoka smiled a bit. “Yes, I am.”

“How did…” He coughed again. "Were you...?"

“No," Ahsoka said sharply, "I'm not part of a secret club." In a calmer voice, she said, helping him sit up and lean against the saddle, "I needed to free my people; they had been taken by slaving Zygerrians. He understood my desperation, and agreed to help me. We had many adventures together, because of it.”

Luke smiled uncomfortably at the memory of the white sun on the homestead, the grave of his grandmother. Then, “So you know…”

“That he’s Vader?” Ahsoka airbent herself onto her bison’s head, and flicked the reins. “Yes. I do. Where is Obi Wan? He can tell -”

Harsher than was needed, “Ben, Obi Wan…he died at the North Pole, a season ago. Two seasons…now.”

Ahsoka hunched into herself for a moment. “Was it…Anakin, who did it?”

“No,” Luke said, shaking his head, “No, it was Tarkin. Did my father…”

“He wanted Obi Wan dead,” Ahsoka told him quietly. Luke cringed, as the bison flew through the night. "He wanted me dead. A lot of people."

“And you still call him your friend?” Luke whispered. A lightning bolt splintered the sky. In the white flash, her grief was palpable.

“Many things can be true at the same time.” She stood and bent a knife-like gust of wind. It pierced through the waves, letting them fly through, straight as an arrow. “Anakin Skywalker is your father. He was a brother to Obi Wan. Even now, he is a precious memory to me. Someone who came into my life briefly, in the sum of things, when I was a child, and changed the course of my life. And he’s murdered hundreds of people. He’s leading a genocidal war machine. He has shown no remorse for that. You need to understand and accept all these truths, or else it will only bring you pain.”

That had been the sixth chakra, hadn’t it? Truth, Yoda had said. Yoda who had lied, as Ben had lied, as everyone had lied.

The bison flew through the stormy sky, as Luke turned this information over. “Should I… when I fought him…”

“Kill him? Not everyone changes, Luke. Some people do, like you.”

“Am I? I seem to be right back where I started, heading to Tatooine, totally ignorant,” he said, meaner than intended. Ashamed, he pressed his lips together.

“I can’t tell you what you want to hear, and don’t ask me to." They neared the ship. She looked over at him. “None of us in this world are untethered, Luke. Your friend, Enfys, is proof enough that extreme non-attachment is injustice, too. I can’t ask you not to feel attached to him, because I don’t know how to be, either.”

“I’m letting the whole world down,” Luke whispered. Lightning flashed. “I’m losing the War. And now everyone's lost hope because I... They think I'm _dead._ ”

Ahsoka clasped his hands. “Not all the mistakes of the War are yours, Luke. Things were set in motion before you were even born. You’ve saved the world before. Don’t give up now. Anakin and Padmé never did, and from what I hear of the Freedom Trail, neither did your Aunt and Uncle. It took them years to make that possible, you know, and the work of so _many_ people.”

Through the dark clouds, the Moon burst through, shining her silvery light upon her great love, the Ocean. “So, let’s go back, to all the people who love you.”

In Ahsoka’s callused hands, Luke felt the love of parents who had never raised him, and the firm earthliness of his Aunt and Uncle. He was their child, too.

When they took Jyn to her new living quarters, she stumbled. Versio gave a low snort, but she didn’t understand. They had not taken her to the black basalt house with the turtle duck pond.

They had given her the family’s old apartment, from before they had fled to Lah’mu.

It was Krennic’s final sick joke.

Jyn stared at the wide office that had been Galen Erso’s. She was four, and the man in white is there talking to Mama and Papa. She is peeping in. Papa grabs her, and laughs, and calls her Stardust. Mama looks like she has been crying.

Papa is dead, and there, still, is the simple wooden desk. In the dining room are the long reclining couches to eat. There is the guest bedroom which will become Versio’s. There is the small pond in the courtyard, her bed, the scattering of toys and colourful paints and singed draperies when she started firebending. Her mother’s writings and artwork are still scattered about. Her father’s books. The family altar, inlaid with kyber, with the gold foil images of Sól, the phoenix, the dragon, the storm, the volcano, and the candles that must always burn for the ancestors. They were unlit now, decaying waxy stubs. If not for the dust, nothing had changed in eighteen years.

Jyn bent down and scooped up her worn cloth tooka-cat, Koodie, stuffed with straw. This was a tomb, and she a ghost, tethered to this place, unable to escape it.

Luke stepped back onto the ship as they neared Wohbani, their entrance into the Tatooine desert. Leia and Enfys embraced his wet and bedraggled form. He heard Enfys crying, and he stroked the back of her head gently. Chirrut, Baze, and Cassian joined in too. He felt the warm musky scent of Artoo, nipping his hand softly as though to say _that was stupid! You should’ve brought me along!_ Even Threepio and Kay seemed glad to have him back. You’re alive, their touches seemed to say. You came back. “I’m sorry for running,” he said.

Leia drew back to look at Ahsoka. “You rescued my brother? Who are you?”

Ahsoka gave her sky bison an affectionate rub. “Ahsoka Tano… I stumbled upon your parents, Bail and Breha, as a teenager, working to form the Rebel Alliance. I think your friend Cassian might know me by my other name.”

Cassian frowned. Then his expression cleared. “You’re Fulcrum. The one helping to put all the rebels in contact with each other.”

Ahsoka gave a little grin. “Your messages were very useful. You’ve really been all over, helping people,” she said, addressing this to him and Leia. “This generation’s Team Avatar is really something, wouldn’t you say, Bail, Breha?”

“We couldn’t be prouder,” Leia’s parents agreed. Bail squeezed Luke’s shoulder warmly. He looked up at the older man, and thought his Aunt and Uncle would’ve liked them. Ahsoka touched Leia’s hair for a moment. She said, “You look like her.”

“You knew my birth mother?” Leia asked.

Ahsoka’s smile warmed. “I did. I only knew her for a short time, but I do know Padmé wanted peace, more than anything.”

Leia’s back straightened. She gestured towards a woman on the deck. Luke recognized her – the woman from the storm, who had yelled at them, all those months ago. “And for that reason,” she said softly, “I renounce my claim as Chief.”

There were gasps across the ship. Even Cassian looked stricken, before his face smoothened. “I...my heritage...my bloodline…,” Leia swallowed, glancing over at her parents. She seemed to grow in size, trying to settle into a set of clothes too big for her, making the shape her own. “I am the Avatar. And the Avatar must transcend the boundaries of our Four Nations. This War represents a failure to listen. The Avatar must hold no political positions.”

When Leia raised her eyes to Bail and Breha’s faces, she seemed to fill the space, power radiating from her.

She clasped her parents’ hands. Her voice shook. “When this War is won, I will rebuild our home. But I will not be Chief. I can never be Chief. I ask that you consider my friend, Evaan Verlaine, and find if she is worthy.”

“My lady, I cannot,” Evaan began, lowering her head.

“You will,” Leia said, touching a necklace of shimmering silver stones on Evaan’s neck. “You have reformed our fleet. You will lead Alderaan back to greatness." 

Bail and Breha Organa looked at one another. Then Breha said, “As Chief, I accept this, and we will hold the Three Challenges, when the War is won.”

Bail chuffed Leia affectionately under the chin. “Come home quickly, _mija_ , when this is all said and done.”

Leia smiled uncertainly, then she looked at her brother. Done. Neither of them was in unison as to what ‘done’ looked like. “We have so much to do,” Luke said.

“Yes. _We_ do.”

But for now, there was Han.

“I’m here to help to rally our forces,” Ahsoka said. “We’ll see each other again, on the beaches of Scarif, on the Day of Black Sun.”

One step at a time. 

Together, six people stepped off the Falcon, heading into the Tatooine desert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always appreciated!


	31. Book Three: Rebirth II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, I know in canon the whole Jabba's palace rescue is Luke's big crowd-pleaser moment with the new outfit and lightsaber, but in this fic...they're just a bunch of a sweaty and sand-covered twenty-year-olds who were temporarily dead a month ago and pretending they're still dead. They can't be breaking out new outfits! Also, Luke's plan STILL doesn't make sense to me in RoTJ.
> 
> One line taken from ATLA because it's such a funny joke that makes me laugh every time. 
> 
> Content warning: I've tried to be as delicate as possible with the implications of how, in this universe, Shmi, a slave, "mysteriously" became pregnant, but the implication is there.

It was a long sail to Wohbani. Fett's ship, _Slave I_ , was a sailed ship, reliant on the winds and tides. His cell on Fett's ship was dark and cramped. No weak points, no planks of wood that revealed hidden weapons, no miraculous bits of metal that could be twisted into lock picks. Han spent those long days in the darkness punctuated by eating, relieving himself in the foul chamber pot, and thinking. He recited the names of all the places he'd been to, to himself. Recited the names of his friends. Over and over, waiting.

Any minute now, the ship was going to shake. That would be Cassian coming in with his waterbending. Cassian, Baze, and Jyn would handle the thugs on deck. Enfys would take down anyone left below. Luke and Leia would slice through the bars of the cell. Bodhi and Chirrut would stay on the Falcon.

Why didn't he have some power to get himself out of here? Han had never been jealous of benders, or even people who could weapons. But then, he'd never had to think of other people before. Arrogant, stupid, cowardly Han Solo. Right back where he started, heading to Tatooine.

One day, as the meal was brought to him, he heard Fett speaking in a low voice to one of his hired henchmen. "Saying they're dead. Saying Mon Cala fell."

"What?" Han was on his feet, gripping the bars of his cell.

Fett had removed his helmet, glancing at him with cold eyes before departing. _"Who died_?" Han roared, but nobody would answer.

In the darkness, he covered his face with his hands. It was obvious.

No, he would know. He would. He would _know_ -

Jyn stood in the courtyard of the house, flexing her hands. As the sun-rose to the East, Jyn moved through the stances of firebending. Punching and kicking across the courtyard until her muscles burned. When she grew sweatier, she switched to her tonfas, blocking and striking imaginary enemies. Her body was beginning to flag. Good. It meant that when she lay her head down tonight, she'd fall asleep immediately.

"Want an opponent?"

Jyn turned, striking out with a blast of a fire. It missed Iden by inches, who merely looked at her, unimpressed. "You're not a bender," Jyn pointed out.

"I've got other tricks," Iden said, pushing aside the long sleeves of her black tunic. Throwing knives were probably littered everywhere across her person, from the sleeves, to the red vest, to her wide trousers, to even her boots. Jyn made a gesture with her tonfa to say, _go on._

There was a whistle of steel. Jyn was thrown backwards. Two throwing knives were embedded into her trousers, pinning her straight to the courtyard tree. She'd barely even see the knives fly. "Need to practice more, Erso."

They sparred until the sun grew low in the sky. Her muscles ached and her belly was begging for food, but Jyn wouldn't quit. She wanted to slam Iden's face into the dirt. "You're in really good shape for spending months on the run," Iden observed.

"I had sparring partners. Two other women..." Her voice trailed off, pulling back her tonfa. "I shared a room with them. Leia and Enfys."

Leia and her stupid adventure scrolls she shared, her constant nattering and fussing to Jyn's health, the way she combed Jyn's hair every night, a thousand strokes until it would gleam. Enfys and her whip-like strength in every sparring match, her midnight runs to get sweets and tea together, her easy laughter and affection, pinching her cheek, hugging her, resting her head.

Iden's brow furrowed. "Leia. That was the Avatar's name."

"Yeah," Jyn swallowed, "It was." It all rose up then, a torrential rush, as she attacked Iden mercilessly. Slashing and striking, driving her back towards the courtyard door. "Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker. Those were their names. Did you know they'd celebrated their twentieth Name Day? Did you know there wasn't money for any gifts? But they were so happy with just better food? They died one week later! One week later!"

"Of course I didn't," Iden snapped. But there was expression of confusion on her face, as though she were trying to process a language she didn't speak. Of course she didn't. Even though she'd been unlucky enough to be born a woman and of two Nations, in a place where that meant you were barely human, it still all shook out that she'd been born on the winning side.

Jyn stopped, dropping her tonfa on the courtyard. Fire burst out of her mouth, a scream of pure rage - _at who? Who are you angry at?_ \- until she collapsed to her knees, chest heaving.

"We'll call it a draw," Iden said, spitting blood from the side of her mouth. "You're not half-bad."

She swallowed. "Thanks," she said hollowly.

Lando lounged in a cantina in the Mos Eisley Oasis, dressed in non-descript, grubby Earth Kingdom clothes. He adjusted the bandage wraps over his nose and mouth as he kept an eye on the Fire Nation soldiers and scum in the watering hole. His pride was taking a bit of a hit in the get-up, but notoriety wasn’t his friend today. Lando Calrissian had made a name for himself in the sabacc tables of the world. How things had changed.

Every day, Lando thought of Bespin. A long time ago, his homeland had barely been a speck on his moral compass. So what if there was a War raging, criminal syndicates thriving, slavers taking Water Tribe, Earth Kingdom and his own? The thrill of adventure was more than enough to smooth hang-ups. How Elthree and Lobot would laugh, maybe in relief, that he had acted on these lingering doubts to become (cheated his way into) Bespin’s Council Head.

And now his people were scattered, at the mercy of the Fire Nation’s evil, all because he’d cut a bad deal to try and keep them safe.

Lando ran a hand down his face. He thought of Han, his friend, kept chained for the amusement of Jabba’s sick court, if the rumours were true. He thought of Lobot, his old friend, begging with his dying breaths, to do something _right_. He thought of Elthree, dark, bony and covered in pale scars, her short tight curls, how he had mocked her fury at their people’s slavery.

He had been wrong. Arrogant, chauvinistic, entitled, and cowardly.

A paw tapped the table in front of him. One step at a time. He looked to see Chewbacca, with a cloaked man. Qi’ra had come through then in getting him the contact (even if she had tried to behead him with her sword when he first walked in). He adjusted his hood and sat down in front of him. He grinned, and kissed the back of the man’s hand. “You’re looking well.”

“You flatter me,” Talon Karrde, smuggler and information broker said, as Chewbacca settled. “So, Han’s in trouble. You went to Crimson Dawn but chose me instead, which tells me you need someone with an in with Jabba, and Qi’ra is notorious for refusing to work with slavers. So, what do you want, or do I have to guess?”

“Negotiate with Jabba. Toss over some information that’s worthless enough, and ask for Han back in return for a new bodyguard.”

Talon arched a brow, playing along. “That bloated slaver and I don’t see eye to eye.”

Lando grinned beneath the wrappings. “But he’ll gratefully accept the bodyguard…yours truly.”

“Ah,” Talon said, sitting back, “Recon. I’ll stay a little, take messages out…”

“And hand them over to Chewie, who will hand them over to my…associates.”

Talon waved a hand. “No need to play coy about what you and Han have gotten up to. I’m not interested in the Fire Nation or the fight. Far as I’ve heard, the Fire Nation’s won the War with the taking of Mon Cala.”

He winced internally. That beautiful city, on fire, shimmering red and gold on the dark water. “Resentful you’re getting dragged over to our side?” Lando said.

The broker laughed. “Maybe so. But leaving Han as a pet to Jabba upsets me more.”

“We understand each other, then.”

Talon grinned. “Perfectly. I’ve had enough of dealing with the Hutts. Getting rid of Jabba and his repulsive family is all I could ask for.”

Lando got to his feet. He wondered what Talon, Qi’ra, and other criminals thought of the Avatar. Whether they were doing this because they knew a winning side when they saw one. What would happen once the Alliance of the Four Nations was restored, if the wheels of cruelty would continue turning. Well, it didn’t matter right now. “Excellent. Let’s go pay Jabba a visit.”

Leia pulled the coarse cloak tighter as they walked through the Mos Eisley Oasis. She worried that someone would spot her face and know immediately who she was, but nobody even glanced at her. In her old shift, tattered trousers from Mon Cala, and cloak, she looked like any other impoverished person, flitting through. Still, she kept a wary eye. Luke was more concealed than her, with his patchy blond beard. Leia hoped sorely he wasn't planning on keeping it after the War.

"I remember when there was a big fountain of ice here, in the Oasis," Chirrut said, as they walked through the dusty town. They had hitched a ride to Mos Eisley with some cargo shipments and reunited with Chewie. Now they needed to find passage to Jabba’s Palace. Leia clutched Lando’s letter tightly in her good hand. She pushed her crippled hand deep into her cloak. Later, they would have to buy gloves. The mark was too distinctive.

"If it was like that, it was a long, long time ago," Luke said over his shoulder. He was pointing out potential people to ask for help. She listened with half an ear as she absorbed the adobe buildings and different Tatooine tribespeople. There were also quite a number of pale faces. The divide between the two camps was stark. Chirrut grew unusually quiet once more, though he gave her a tiny smile when she glanced over. Baze brought up the rear, agreeing or dismissing Luke’s suggestions.

Cassian and Enfys had stayed behind, once they had found where Lando had hidden the Falcon. While she trusted Cassian with her life, they needed him if Jabba’s goons pursued them all the way to the sea. Besides, he was a waterbender in a desert. Poor Cassian. He'd really thought Jedha was the last bit of sand he'd ever see. For Enfys, she was on the bad side of most of the Crime Syndicates. They couldn't save Han if they had to worry Jabba was going to take her head too.

Leia was secretly glad they had stayed behind. More people to stare pitingly at seeing Vader’s old home. She could hardly imagine how Han was going to react.

“We don’t have enough money,” Luke said, annoyed, breaking her out of her reverie.

“Give me a moment,” Baze said. He walked towards a group of indeterminate sex, swathed head-to-toe in cloth and bandage wraps. Only their eyes, brown and black, glinted out, if they removed their sand goggles.

“Wait, those are Tuskens, you can’t…”

Baze approached their leader and made a series of gestures. A sign language. “Bargain with them,” Luke trailed off.

Baze continued to negotiate, until at last the leader nodded. He waved them over. The group of Tuskens had several huge brown beasts with them – banthas. Luke drew in front of her protectively, gripping her arm tight.

“Their leader is Reirin. They’ve agreed to take us across in exchange for providing protection against threats,” Baze explained. Reirin spoke something to the Tusken group, high and distinctly female.

“Tuskens don’t have women leaders, their women stay in the camps. This is a trap! And look, she’s stolen a kyber crystal too!” Luke cried. Evidently Reirin knew enough Basic. She spun her strange spear-like weapon at Luke viciously, topped with a kyber crystal. Chirrut raised a calm hand, though his face seemed taught.

“She speaks truthfully, which you would see, if you could put aside your anger,” Chirrut said. Luke looked down, gritting his teeth. “And she found a kyber crystal. Many do. The Fire Nation has. There is no rhyme or reason -” Chirrut sucked in his breath abruptly. Baze said something to him in their own tongue, but Chirrut shook his head, gripping his cane tight.

Speaking in their tongue, a Tusken reached for her. Luke yelled, but Baze grabbed his arm. Leia was swung off her feet and placed onto a bantha. She blinked down, wondering why they'd done that. Then she recalled her burnt hand. It would have been a struggle to pull herself up.

"Thank you," she said, her throat thick with sand.

The Tusken woman nodded, clipped and curt. They set off.

As they continued through the desert, the banthas making a steady pace, Luke asked, “Where did you learn to communicate with them?”

“The Holy Temple accepted all refugees,” Chirrut said, his expression growing sad. “Many Tuskens have been displaced by new settlers, long before this War began…”

“A tribe of them killed my – _our_ grandmother,” Luke said harshly.

Chirrut turned sightless eyes on him. “And that was wrong. That does not mean it was not wrong to take their lands.”

Luke grew quiet. Leia stared out at the vast sand dunes as they continued on. Far in the distance, she could hear screaming. She saw the golden dunes bathed in red fire, blue eyes glinting in the flame… Fire she would bathe Jabba’s palace in… She saw the man’s head turn. Slave and master alike, burning in the red sun of her fury… She saw his short hair was as sandy as Luke’s… _Father_ … Baze touched her shoulder.

"You're burning the reins."

She jerked backwards, astonished. After Ilum, Leia never thought she would be capable of producing fire again. She pressed her face against the beast's shaggy fur, soothing its momentary panic.

“He...,” she murmured, “Something terrible here… I want to…”

“You don’t have to be your father’s child to be destroyed by your own fear and anger,” Baze said. His gaze fell on Chirrut, who looked away. “Anger can be righteous. Never be afraid to be angry at those who have done cruelty,” he told her, “Injustice must be met. _Always._ But don’t let it carve you into what you despise.”

Leia turned that thought over and over in her mind, as they travelled through the endless desert. The screaming was so loud. Not even the occasional skirmishes with sand snakes and rival tribes could stop it.

I’m going insane, she thought. Vader, Anakin Skywalker…he had done something here, something of unspeakable evil. The Spirits beneath the sand whispered it to her.

“Why aren’t we stopping?” Leia spoke up, as the sun began to burn into the horizon. Baze communicated.

“They say that valley is a bad place,” he explained, “Years ago, a burning man killed every person, man, woman, and child, of that tribe. And they’re saying…twin suns…? I don't think I have that right.”

Leia twisted in the saddle to look over at Luke. He looked ill. “Father,” he whispered, “Uncle Owen said it was a bad place. In revenge for grandmother…”

Neither of them spoke.

Luke had told her, once and only once, about their grandmother. She had been sold by her family to one of Jabba’s cronies, bought and used from man to man across her life. Shmi had been pregnant as a teenager, with Anakin. How ironic, Leia thought with a bitter twist of her lips, that the man leading the Fire Nation's genocide probably had Earth Kingdom blood. Could she blame Vader for never wanting to think of where it'd come from?

Bought by a new man, who had freed her – could you love someone you had owned, Leia wondered? Had Shmi Skywalker ever had a life that belonged to her alone? – until she had been taken, tortured unspeakably by a Tusken tribe in revenge for the settler's actions. A bargaining chip, a tool.

What would that terrified fourteen-year-old girl have thought, if she had known the child she carried would grow up to become a murderer? That some fool had believed him to be the answer to their prayers?

Did Vader think of that girl?

She listened to the screaming in the desert and felt sick. This was her family’s legacy.

When the Tuskens left them a few miles out from Jabba’s Palace, Luke pulled out his money pouch. Solemnly, he handed it to Reirin. She seemed stunned, speaking in their language rapidly to the others in the group. Then, they made some kind of gesture, before they rode away into the desert sun.

It was a blessing, Baze told him. Reirin had abandoned her tribe for freedom that no women were granted, and other women and children had followed her. Now the money would help them on their way.

Then he, Leia, and Chirrut began to use their seismic sense as they walked through the sand. Soon, they uncovered a large wooden box, as Lando’s message had specified. Inside were three guard uniforms, a set of metal chains, and some shabby-looking Earth Kingdom clothes. The group changed hurriedly. Leia, now-dressed as a bounty hunter, convinced Chewie to allow her to chain him.

They trooped towards Jabba’s Palace, an ugly series of spires earth-bent into a cliff-side. Lando’s plan worked flawlessly as they entered through the gates. Right until the guards demanded that _they_ be the ones to escort the bounty hunter through.

Their yelling, their man-handling, every second endangering Han and Lando…

Luke flexed his good hand.

Stone peeled itself off from the entrance tunnel and pooled around the guards’ necks. It began to squeeze. He watched their foolish faces go blue…

A hand fell onto his shoulder. Chirrut. The old monk said nothing. But the acid-taste in his mouth at that sightless gaze was more than enough. Luke let his hand fall.

Leia crept silently through Jabba’s throne room. She kept on her boxy helmet, with a face plate that covered all but her eyes. With a little soundbending, Jabba had bought her story as the bounty hunter here for Chewbacca’s bounty. Their furry friend was now chained next to Han, in the centre of Jabba’s throne room. She could hear the soft footsteps of her friends as they carefully navigated the sleeping court. Bounty hunters, sycophants, criminals, and slaves slept on the rock floor. She shuddered seeing the bodies of the women, chained and branded.

She reached Han. Each of his limbs was chained, pinning him spread-eagled against the wall. A cruel muzzle had been placed over his mouth. His eyes were covered by a strip of black cloth. Chewie made a whimper, bound on the floor under him. Her blood was molten hot at the sight.

From under her filthy robes, Leia bent a thin shimmering sheet of water from her water skin. It was clumsier than she would have liked. Leia grit her teeth. She’d have to practice more, now. She cut both free. Han fell into Chewie’s out-stretched arms, a muffled groan escaping. With more cuts, she worked the muzzle off his face. Bending the water back into her skin, she carefully removed the cloth.

“What’s going on?” Han rasped, squinting. His eyes were still adjusting to the light. She put the water skin to his lips. He drank greedily, spilling some on himself. Han squinted. “Who are you?”

Leia touched his face. Recklessly, she pulled the helmet off.

“Someone who loves you,” Leia said.

“You're _alive_ ,” he breathed, and kissed her. For a moment, she allowed herself to sink into it. Han’s lips were dry and cracked, the kiss more desperate than romantic, but he was here, and it was more than she could ever ask for.

Then the curtain behind them swung upon, and Jabba, a pale, bald, enormous man, began to laugh.

Leia grit her teeth as Jabba dragged her across the sand, chained to several other slave girls. Jabba held the end of their leash in one meaty hand, chucking to himself. A litter carried him, king of Tatooine. The slave brand on the back of her neck was a searing pain. It focused her fury. Nothing had been more painful, more degrading, to have the poker taste her flesh as she knelt at Jabba's feet.

Leia looked around from under her hair, jaw so tense her teeth ground against each other. Her friends were being pulled along by Jabba’s guards, as well as the bounty hunter from Bespin, Boba Fett. In the sand was a giant pit, from which brown-green tentacles emerged. Sarlaac, she had heard the guards hissing. Some great sand creature, which her friends would be fed to for daring to pull one over Jabba. Only Lando had escaped notice, blending in amongst the guards, armed with his bow. They’d taken her water skin. Her hands and feet were chained together. Her pale skin was sweating under the sun.

She had to do something.

Leia looked over at her fellow slaves. Most were Earth Kingdom girls, with jet-black hair and almond eyes, or brown skinned and curly haired. A few Air Nomad girls and women had been taken as well, or maybe Water Tribe, as well as some pale Southern Earth Kingdom girls, maybe even Fire Nation. All of them looked terrified, avoiding eye contact as they shuffled along. Only one of them, a dark-skinned woman, her dreadlocks bound into two twin tails, looked over with something like curiosity. They'd been dyed green. Northern Water Tribe, from Ryloth.

“What’s your name?” Leia whispered. At first, the woman seemed not to have heard.

Then, “Oola.”

Cutting straight to the chase, Leia continued, “We need to kill Jabba.”

“You and everyone else here, pale face,” Oola hissed, but she drew closer to Leia, all the same. “What’s your plan?”

Leia rubbed her sweaty wrists together. Something was tickling at the back of her mind. “I'm a waterbender, I need…” Leia said, eyes widening, “A distraction.”

Oola smiled, vicious. She swung her cuffed hands into the face of another girl. “Lyn, you _bitch_ , I’ll ask Jabba to feed you to the rancor!” she shrieked. The other girl, a fair-skinned girl with almond eyes and purple twin-tails, reared back. A tussle broke out. Jabba spat something as the guards began to converge on them.

Leia looked down at her sweaty wrists. She exhaled. Her icy breath froze the cuffs solid. With a crunch, she shattered them.

Pulling more sweat from her skin, Leia sliced through her ankle cuffs, and Oola and Lyn’s chains. Jabba roared with anger. Leia kept freeing more slaves, running straight towards him. With another strike, she cut a long strip of Jabba's chain. Oola seized the leash, tossing one end to Leia. “Catch!”

Leia grabbed the end as they rushed Jabba. Her sandbending sent guards flying as they pounced onto the litter. Oola's eyes widened, but she said nothing. Chaos erupted as her friends tore into Jabba’s guards and Boba Fett. Perfect. The grotesque man could do nothing as she and Oola threw the chain around his neck, and pulled. Leia wanted him to bleed, to burn. But Oola’s revenge was more important than her own.

Jabba shuddered, then went still.

“He’s dead,” Oola whispered. She spat on his face. "You have a way out of this dirt-ball, Avatar?"

Leia bared her teeth, kicking Jabba's body aside. She wanted to do more - focus, Leia. She called down to the other slaves. "Where does he keep his sand-sailors?" 

"Well, instead of a big dark blur, now I see a big light blur," Lando heard Han say. "Just stay close to Lando. I've got this," Luke hissed.

"Lando? What's Lando doing here? He sold me out!"

Lando plainly did not see how Luke had this, but he wasn't about to question it. There were fourteen heavily armed other guards, plus Boba Fett. He could probably get a shot in at Jabba, but if he drew now, they'd riddle him with holes.

Then absolute chaos broke out. Leia had - she'd cut through her chains! Instantly, Luke performed the exact same trick with his own sweat. Boba Fett pounced, Luke drawing up a wall of sand to block his blade. Lando pulled his bow, knocking an arrow and firing. One guard down, plunging into the Sarlaac pit. He shot another arrow, killing another guard. Another roared, charging him. As the man collided with him, Lando stabbed upwards with an arrow. The man fell aside.

With a cry, Lando slipped into the pit. He gripped as hard as he could onto the compacted sand. _The things I do for Han..._

Han began to lower a spear down. "Lando, grab hold!"

"Lower it more!"

"I'm can't see anything!"

"*Oh no, what a disaster!*" Chirrut called.

"...Sorry."

Han held on tightly to Baze's hands as he lowered his upper body into the Sarlaac pit. Just as Lando reached out, one of the downed guards tripped over Chewie. Han cried out. The spear hit Lando's face, sending him further into the pit.

Han's hands seized his bow. Baze was holding onto Han's legs. Lando looked up. Luke, and Chirrut were dispatching guards left and right. Boba Fett was getting to his feet though, pulling out his wicked long bow. "Han, I need you to trust me!"

Han stared at him. Then he nodded.

Lando pulled an arrow from his quiver. Using all the strength in his upper body, he threw himself upwards, sinking his feet into the sand. The arrow notched. Gripping the bow tight, right next to Han's hand, Lando fired.

The arrow shot past Han's face, narrowly missing him. It struck true, digging into the side of Boba Fett's neck. The bounty hunter staggered, tripped, and plunged into the Sarlaac pit.

With a roar, Baze yanked the both of them back to safety. "You are so lucky I couldn't see you do that," Han said, clapping him on the back. It was forgiveness enough. "Now let's get out of here!"

Luke sighed as they rode Jabba’s sand-sailors back towards the shore. Han was back with them, dozing lightly against Chewie’s furry body. Spirits, he'd missed Han so much. He watched Leia stroke Han’s hair, and smiled. Luke might’ve teased her, but he wanted Leia to be happy. He was glad she had found some small comfort in all the chaos. He flushed a little as he wished for the same.

Soon, the Falcon and the dusty shore came into view. He saw Enfys waving, and broke into a grin. The Air Nomad soared over onto one of the sand-sailors, landing on the deck and seizing Han in a fierce hug. "Han!"

"Enfys, right?" Han said, squeezing back, squinting. "All I'm seeing is...when did you get so pale?"

"I'm wearing my helmet," Enfys said, sounding confused.

"He has temporary blindness, it's wearing off," Luke assured her. "We'll have Cassian take a look at him."

"Oh, he's gonna love that."

Enfys nodded, turning to look over the newly freed slaves. They had reached the Falcon. Luke and his friends hopped off. Cassian was waiting there, giving Han a brusque hug. Enfys removed her helmet, her red hair glowing in the fading desert sunlight. “Do you have anywhere to go?” she asked.

The women looked at one another, and shook their heads. Luke had met many like them, sold by their fathers into slavery, or kidnapped and taken during the fall of places like Ryloth. It sickened him. “My people are in Savareen, and we would welcome helping you on your way, or joining us if that is what you wish,” Enfys told them.

Oola seemed the spokesperson for the group. She turned to the other women, who nodded. When she looked back at Enfys, she set her shoulders firm. “Any men there?”

“A few. And for my people, any man that dares harm a woman is killed,” Enfys said firmly. Oola made a sound of agreement.

“Look for the symbol of the White Sun on your journey,” Luke added, “It marks safehouses on the Freedom Trail. My Aunt may be dead, but the trail will live on.”

Enfys smiled at that.

Oola approached Leia. “Thank you for helping us kill him,” she said. She leant down and kissed Leia’s cheek. “You make a very dashing hero.”

Leia went red, touching her cheek. The sand-sailors peeled away, as the group waved them off.

“Dashing, hmm,” Cassian said, raising a brow.

“I know, I was the one fighting Boba Fett,” Luke stage-whispered, making Leia glare at the two of them. “Okay, okay, let’s get going,” she grumbled.

“I won’t be following you to the Fire Nation,” Lando spoke up, shouldering his weapon. “I know, it’s a tragedy. Volcanoes, weird food, and maniacs.”

“What? But we couldn’t have done any of this without you,” Luke cried. “You’re one of us, now.”

“Even though you got me into this in the first place,” Han grumbled, only somewhat bitter.

Lando winced. “Team Avatar, huh? I’d like that. But right now, I’ve got a responsibility. I need to find the Eastern Air Nomads. I put them in harm’s way, and I need to make sure they’re okay.”

“I understand,” Enfys said softly, “For that, there’ll always be a place for you here.” They spoke some words in Air Nomad language, clasping hands.

“Try to keep sane with these, sister,” Lando teased. She laughed.

Han embraced him. “Take care of yourself, buddy.”

“You too, Han,” Lando said. He grinned. “This isn’t goodbye. You think I’ll let you steal all the thunder when we invade?”

They hugged their newfound friend, and let him go.

As he left, Han glanced around. "Hey, where's Erso and Bodhi?"

Bodhi sat in his cell.

In front of him was a pile of letters from Jyn, carefully screened by the guards. Most of them were asking him how he was, if there was anything she could get him. Guilt permeated every word.

Good. She ought to feel guilty. The Avatar was dead. He had hoped beyond anything, but Jyn was truly lost now. Bodhi mourned.

Luke and Leia were gone, forever. He could not even meet them again in their next incarnation. The Avatar cycle was over. What happened then - they were just... _gone._ No reincarnation, no return, just disappearing into the aether. Even when he escaped, there was no hearing Luke's laugh, no seeing Leia's rare smiles.

Stop. He couldn't keep thinking like this. Later, later...

Later, he would find where they were buried, outside the walls of Mon Cala. Pay his last respects.

In the cell beside him was a pale-skinned man, who had introduced himself as Kyle Katarn. A Fire Nation defector. He’d been imprisoned for seeking old Jedi texts on firebending, looking for a purer source. Bodhi could work with that. Katarn was a bit younger than him. He watched the man flick his fingers lazily, snapping a flame on and off. Okay, that might be a bit of a problem. He’d dealt with one too many reckless, bored, and fight-seeking firebenders for his liking.

A warm wave of affection for Jyn filled him. He tamped it down. Those days were over.

But he’d think of something. Bodhi had been too passive for too long.

_You can make it right, if you have the courage, to listen to what is in your heart._

He sucked in his breath, and knew what he had to do. “Hey,” he said, “What do you know about Solar eclipses?”


	32. Book Three: Rebirth III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We reach the Fire Nation at last. One of the most interesting aspects (to me) of writing this fic was "who is going to run the Fire Nation after the War ends" because while ATLA answers that question... we all know Jyn would be the worst political leader (Cassian would literally have to do EVERYTHING) and the SW universe basically exists a continued state of "the Republic screws up and never tries to better itself and the Sith come back AGAIN". Which I feel fundamentally contradict with the messages of hope, rebuilding, and renewal that ATLA is all about. 
> 
> So yeah, I hope the answer to that question, by the final chapter, is satisfactory.

Vader did not linger long in Coruscant. To remain was to remember. He sunk deeper into the angry burning furnace of his heart, summoned the dragon within it to rampage through the rebellious Earth Kingdom states. Vader did not wish to think of the plans he had formed to usurp Palpatine. He had seen the disgust and horror on as they plummeted, on another face before –

Padmé, forgive him, Padmé, who had tried to kill him out of fear and desperation, when he had _only_ been trying to save her…

Vader roared as he burnt his way through the enemy legions. He was leading his personal forces of the _Executor_ through some watery hellhole called Cianap in the Southern Earth Kingdom. The natives here were pale-faced, fair-haired, people living underground in earthbent cities. Cities hewn from stone by mighty earthbenders. Someone had told him familiar stories like that once. In the candle-light of a shack in the desert, snapping her fingers to produce a burst of flame for the fire-pit.

Prophecy upon prophecy. Something out of nothing.

Vader scowled under his mask. He could almost hear Obi Wan’s contemptuous teachings. _That is the trap of anger, to rely on hate and fear…_

Vader landed in the water of their lake. Beneath him, a great orange eye blinked open. Ender, the natives had spoken, their greatest card against conquer. Some Spirit, that commanded the waters of this lake. Like the ocean-man, who had made the river obey…

The beast rose up, part woman, part shark, hundreds of feet tall. From the bank, a blond child with blue eyes froze, watching him.

But Vader was Sól come again, was he not?

In his hands, he bent a great spear of flame. He fired it straight into the creature’s eye. She howled. Vader burnt through her like an overripe melon. He tossed the child aside with one contemptuous hand.

Then he leapt. Arced through the air to tear straight through the Ender’s throat in one burning blaze. As the creature fled, Vader landed. How Obi Wan would weep at what he had done, the chaos he might unleash. The grass burnt as he walked towards the child. Pale and blond. His gaze seemed to waver beneath the mask, as though viewed from underwater.

Every day now, in this oppressive suit of armour, he was walking underwater. Slowly drowning, step by step.

 _You_ did that.

“You should not thank me, child.”

He raised a hand. Behind him, a bright white flare rose up from the Fire Nation ranks. City secured. “It seems,” Vader said, “The Spirits are with you today.”

There was only Sidious now. Sidious, who gathered his horror onto himself.

No.

There was one link left. _Erso_.

Han and Chewie docked the Falcon in a secluded cave on one of the Fire Nation’s outer islands. The Fire Nation compromised a chain of volcanic islands, some larger than others, made by dragon tears, the locals claimed. On the journey, Cassian had been helping Leia and Luke master their waterbending with their disabled hands. The twins were showing great progress, modifying the style to use more limb and leg movement to compensate for the lack of finger precision. There had also been time to fill Han in on…Vader.

After much sputtering (“you brought them back from the _dead_?”), Han had asked the burning question. “So, are you going to kill him on the Day of Black Sun?”

Neither Luke nor Leia had been able to answer.

Cassian could feel the tension radiating off them. A simmering unease had rippled across the whole group since the day Mon Cala fell. Since the day Jyn had betrayed him. Since the day Cassian had brought two people back from the dead.

He looked at his hands. Felt alien in his own skin. If the Avatar had died…it was all worthless, wasn’t it? Everything he had ever done, it would all be worthless. Everything he had done for his people, for the cause.

Moon Healer. Resurrector. Lies that swirled through the newly named Rebel Alliance.

They disembarked, taking in their surroundings. None of them had ever been to the Fire Nation before. A part of Cassian had imagined endless gloom, fire, dragons and spikes everywhere. Instead, they found moss-covered lava fields, rolling black hills and mountains, sandy beaches. Impossibly bright sunlight and sticky heat. It nearly rankled him to admit how soothing it was to feel the thickness of water in the humid air. Ready to crack open with another tropical storm, as the Rebels were, waiting with the patience of the glaciers to deliver the killing blow. The houses here were made from the rich volcanic soil, grown over with moss and lichen to create beautiful little green homes, sprouting up from the earth. The island's name was Gatalenta.

“It’s beautiful,” Luke said. Chirrut dragged his hands through the earth, nodding in admiration, as Enfys unclipped her helmet, feeling the swift breeze off the sea. 

Leia didn’t say anything, but her eyes widened. “I had a friend from here,” Leia said, as they walked towards some caves, “Her father worked in Coruscant, building ships, so my parents knew their family.”

“What happened to her?” Enfys asked, as they stepped into the dank darkness of the caves.

“The Fire Nation’s Outer Islands were always more connected to the Southern Isles. They crushed their governor eventually, for rumoured rebel activity. No more ships went out to Alderaan. I never saw her again.” Leia’s eyes dropped. “She was a good person, for being Fire Nation.”

Nobody voiced the very loud, glaring truth, of the twin's own heritage.

Clearing his throat to ease the tension, Han groused, “Is our plan really to stay in caves for months until the eclipse? Scavenging for food?”

Baze thunked the wall. Several white insects dropped down. "By food, do you mean cave hoppers?"

“Threepio, spit that out!” Leia cried.

The parrot looked guilty, halfway through munching on the cave hoppers. Artoo and Kay sniffed the insects and made faces. “Looks like you’ve been out-voted,” Han said smugly, as Leia picked up her sulking parrot.

“Let’s find some new clothes, then.”

The group crouched, looking over at some kind of washing house. Clothes fluttered on laundry lines. They looked at one another. “Do you think this is…” Luke began.

“I call the red silk dress!” Leia said, running towards the nearest line.

Luke grinned. The group took off, Chirrut yelling, “Baze, you better pick something nice out for me!”

“Don’t count on it!”

It took about ten minutes for the group to assemble, now disguised as Fire Nation. Cassian had found a rather unimpressive black set that seemed like the uniform of a petty bureaucrat. He’d also found the matching cap that went with it, further hiding his face. It seemed to be made at least of cotton, given the weather. Luke’s had found a black tunic, and trousers, which, together with his beard, gave him a start. _Vader_. He shook the thought from his head quickly.

"The beard helps," Cassian said. 

"It's itchy, I don't know how you handle it."

Han and Baze had found themselves basic red shirts, and dark trousers, with Baze very reluctantly hiding away his many explosive belts on the docked Falcon. “They’re going to think you’re wealthy if you’re wearing that,” Leia joked, as Chirrut wrapped himself in a wine-red robe.

“Is the idea less pants, more money?” Han said.

“And longer robe, more money,” Leia said, as she helped an annoyed Enfys pin on her own white dress. Or tried as best she could, with only one working hand. Luke quickly pitched in. Both women’s dresses fell to below their knees, with pins at the shoulders and under their breasts. The outfits were complete with leather sandals and veils pinned to their hair. With her hair loose, and a veil over it, Leia could reasonably pass as a different person from the Avatar. Enfys didn’t look particularly happy about her get-up, especially since she could not carry her staff with her. Cassian didn’t entirely blame her. Of all of them, she stood out the most at first glance due to her skin colour and hair. He saw Luke put a protective arm around her shoulders, as they walked into town.

In addition to supplies, Cassian purchased two sets of black leather gloves. Luke and Leia slid them on, concealing their burnt hands. "I'd rather just wear one," Luke said, flexing his good hand in the glove.

"One glove tells a story. We don't want to have stories."

"Look at us," Enfys muttered, "We practically invite stories."

They kept their time in the marketplace short. Some Fire Nation viewed them with distaste at their cover of being from the colonies, but others, particularly older people, seemed indifferent. Still, Cassian did not feel safe as they walked through town. He was lucky, very lucky, to be light-skinned, in this context, but there were plenty who paused and knew, _no, you're not one of us..._

How detached these peasant people seemed from the War. More concerned with their own poverty than with two decades of genocide and expansion. Cassian had been hungry three times in his life: once when Fest fell, and the villagers of Alderaan, taking in the refugees, did not have enough to last everyone through the winter, again as a teenager as their population dwindled.

And once as a refugee again, trying to get Mon Cala.

Cassian studied the narrow face handing him a small sack of lentils, before he dismissed the thought.

Esseles was a congregation of several islands of what had once been fisherfolk. Leia saw numerous shrines as they sailed through, all for the same Spirit. They’d come in the shadow of night. Esseles’ waters were filled with algae blooms that glowed iridescent blues and greens in the darkness. They’d gasped as they watched pods of flying dolphin fish arcing through the waters and jumping into the air, glowing, more Spirit than mortal in the Moonlight. And perhaps they were. Perhaps this was what Master Yoda had truly meant when he had spoken of the connection between nature and the Spirits, the Spirits and them, and back around to the world before them.

If there was beauty in the Fire Nation, it was here.

In the daytime, she pored over the map with Han and Cassian, while the others lounged on the deck. Well, Chirrut was hanging off the edge of the Falcon, while Baze rubbed his back. Artoo snoozed. Threepio and Kay nipped at each other. Leia aimed a kick at Kay to get him to stop harassing her pet. The mongoose lizard glared at her reproachfully. Cassian patted him absently, making Kay hiss. “We still have a way to go,” he was saying. “We dock, we get more food at the village, and we leave.”

“Sure, sure, master planner,” Han muttered, as he pulled the Falcon into an isolated cove. Cassian grunted.

They left the animals with the ship, covering it with some of the moss growing on the volcanic soil. Then they trooped down towards one of the Esseles’ individual islands, Thrinaka. What stood out immediately to Leia was how quiet things were. Only a handful of sickly-looking elderly were out, scooping nets through the brackish water. “What happened here?” Luke asked a thin-faced woman dragging some diseased-looking fish.

“The factory moved in and poisoned our reef,” she responded. She gestured over her shoulder. An ugly black building belching smoke was visible a few miles away. “Some refinery for the war. Most of us signed up to work there. Work all day, and most of the night, too.”

“Does your village have a supply store?” Cassian asked. “We’re colonists.”

“Not anymore, they give us rations, on account of the economy,” she said, in a voice that suggested she didn’t know what that meant. She eyed them up and down. “Name’s Scarlet Hark. You big strong boys can carry my fish, and I’ll give you some.”

Shrugging, Luke, Cassian and Han each grabbed an end of her woven basket. Leia glanced around as they began to walk towards the hub of wood and earthen homes. There were only very young children around, their stomachs bloated from hunger. Leia reached unconsciously towards them. “ _No llames la atención_ ,” Cassian said.

“ _¡Están hambrientos!_ ” she snapped.

“ _Nuestra misión es lo primero._ ”

“ _¿Y este pueblo?_ ”

“They sure do talk strange in the Earth Kingdom,” Scarlet said. Chirrut and Baze swiftly launched into a conversation in the impossibly-hard tonal language of their people. Leia tried to calm her racing heart. The last thing she wanted was for them to be dragged through the streets, screamed at for being demons.

Scarlet produced three unpleasant-looking fish for them. In the centre of the town was a temple, she said, to the Spirit of the islands, Aach. The carven stone statue wore a long robe pinned at her shoulders, swooping around her upper arms. Her arms were covered in scales, and Leia guessed beneath the robe she had no feet or legs, only a tail. Two bull-horns emerged from her head. In front of it, a middle-aged woman in a white robe was arguing with an official. A younger woman with very pale skin, and pale blonde hair in two twin buns, stood beside her. They looked healthier, definitely better-off, than the people of these islands. The younger woman in particular looked noble, with all the ribbons and garlands woven through her hair.

“Why won’t you let me look at the factory?” the woman in white demanded, “I have written countless letters to your official asking, and he gave permission.”

"Lady Chuchi," the official sneered to her companion, "I would seek better company as gentry, than the daughter of...what was it? A scribe? A accountant?"

"I apologize for my friend's impudence," Lady Chuchi said through her teeth, "But Mon speaks my own feelings."

 _Mon..._ Yes, Leia had heard that name before. She saw Cassian stiffen. Thinking fast, Leia attached herself to the party. “Lady Chuchi, there you are! I got frightfully lost! I’m so excited to see the factory.”

Several emotions crossed Mon Mothma’s face very quickly. Her foot discreetly hit the side of Chuchi's leg. Instantly, Chuchi beamed. “Ah, my dear, I was getting worried. Another bureaucrat's daughter, which I can vouch for, unless you should like to question the Papanoida family's loyalty to our Nation,” she said imperiously, walking straight past the shocked and quickly blustering official, “Why don’t you bring a servant with you.”

Her friends were staring at her with various degrees of confusion to complete horror. Trying desperately to remember what Cassian’s alias had been in Mon Cala, Leia said, in as pleasant and vapid a tone as possible, “J-Joreth. Joreth, please come with me. I want to see the factory.”

There was a pause. Then, Cassian fell in step next to her, his eyes betraying nothing. The boat ride to the factory was quiet. Soon, a smug-looking military official was ushering them aside. “Ah, dear Lady Riyo,” he said pompously, “How is your uncle doing?”

“Baron Papanoida is well, thank you,” Riyo, the blonde woman, said, a faint edge to her politeness. "May I introduce Mon Mothma and..."

"Lora Kobadi," Leia finished.

“From the colonies, hmm? Your generosity in educating the lower classes is spirited, Lady Chuchi. Now, I know you are all very curious as to the glorious work we do here. But do refrain from speaking to my workers unless I do.”

He didn’t even look at Cassian. Leia forced her face to relax into something more dim-witted. She clutched Mon’s arm like a silly child as they walked through the factory. Leia had never seen a factory before; truthfully, she had very little understanding of how the Fire Nation’s technology was manufactured or made.

What she saw horrified her.

The heat inside was suffocating. People scurried back and forth, heating huge vats of molten metal. Hammers pounded while the metal was still hot. She saw toxic chemicals falling into the drainage system below, which led out into the water. Children as young as six ran about, shovelling coal into the ovens. On the right wall was a series of dirty glass windows, dimly reflecting the right light of the fire and molten metal. Leia spotted a woman teetering near the edge of one of the vats.

“Watch out!” She broke from the group, seizing the back of the woman’s tunic to yank her back.

The woman whirled on her, dark hair plastered to her sweating forehead. “What were you thinking?”

“I...I saved your life,” Leia said, letting go.

The woman’s blue eyes hardened. “Saved? I was nearly free from this place. No fish in the water. No food at home. My son, missing his hands from a hammer fallen wrong. My skin burns and my bones ache. Tell me, girl, what’s the worth of that life?”

Soldiers grabbed the woman’s arms, tugging her away from Leia. The military official clicked his tongue in disappointment. He spoke, his voice ringing out across the workers. “Attention!" The workers stood at alert, keeping their eyes focused on their feet, "Tell me, what is the purpose of this factory?”

A high, exhausted call answered. “To win the War!”

“And so, you should all be grateful!” the official, the fanatic, spewed. “The Alliance of Four Nations tried to bankrupt us in the Separatist Wars, but look at what you have – work! Freedom! _They_ want what _they_ have not. The War is almost over! We will have all the riches and resources to share!"

"Aach provided everything for us, until you and your Fire Lord took it all away!" the woman spat. One of the soldiers back-handed her.

“Your Spirit, Aach, has abandoned you! But your Fire Lord will not! Freedom!”

Leia watched the woman be dragged away.

Later, they sat on the Falcon with Mon Mothma and Riyo Chuchi. “What you did was extremely dangerous; only a handful of people are meant to know the Avatar survived,” Mon chided. Riyo had fallen silent. She seemed, Cassian thought, piecing the links together, the money and reputation behind Mon's idealism, given that Mon had reached out to the Rebels.

Leia scowled, folding her arms. “What were you doing here in the first place?”

Mon gave a little smile. “What do you think will happen, once you remove Palpatine and Vader?” Cassian saw Luke shudder. It was a rhetorical question, so Leia remained silent. “There is nothing stopping people from revolting against the next Fire Lord and restarting the War. They need a reason to believe peace is worth more. That is only way to make it last.”

“Guess appealing to our inherent worth as people isn’t going to work,” Cassian muttered.

Mon winced. “My father was nobody in the system. A scribe. Through him I saw what we needed - that the Fire Nation needs to change. And I know that dream is dreamed all the strongest by the downtrodden: the poor, the women, and the mixed-race of the Fire Nation. What can the nobles do if the _people_ want someone different in power, who isn't interested in their excuses, to line their coffers with the gold they've stolen?”

“To be honest,” Luke said slowly, “I’m surprised that the Fire Nation treats its people this way.”

“These people are poor,” Mon explained. “You have to remember, when the War began, the Fire Nation had no people perfectly in place to exploit – except its own. And nobody cares for their lives, in this place, and many others.”

“For many, to die for one’s people is the greatest sacrifice,” Riyo said, “But we want them to live for their people – and for themselves.”

“They don’t seem to think life is worth very much,” Cassian said.

Riyo raised her hazel eyes to Cassian’s face. “What do you think makes life worthwhile, Captain? Surely it is not the number of men dead on the battlefield.”

“Don’t speak to me of War,” Cassian said sharply, “For you it’s all counters on a map or numbers – I’ve _lived_ it. I've lived their hunger and I -”

Cassian stopped. He had unconsciously linked their suffering to his people's. It rankled him. His first instinct was to dismiss the thought, to point out that they had no one to blame but their own kind for what had happened to them. To think otherwise felt like a betrayal of his own.

Yet he couldn't help remembering the kindness and warmth Obi Wan had shown, his willingness to lay down his life for the Water Tribe. Jyn saving a child in Jedha, fighting with the Partisans, disguising herself after dark to better the lives of the Lower Tier. Wedge abandoning the Fire Nation to fight for Mon Cala.

Even Galen Erso, setting a fuse inside the Death Star, that only one of them needed to light.

They had betrayed their masters.

Clearing her throat, Mon handed Leia a letter. “It’s from Amilyn,” she said kindly, “Gatalenta's independence is gone, but she never forgot you."

"Amilyn... Amilyn lived?" Her voice broke on the word.

"She and her family had to escape underground, but they came into contact with us dissenters. In fact, she was the one who told me stories, about what the Fire Nation’s rule could look like, from when she visited the Water Tribe. A council, the Many Mothers, chosen by their people. A communal life where the people know and understand they have power, as equals. It’s a beautiful dream.”

Leia took the letter hesitantly. “I… _I_ was the one, who inspired you all?”

Mon nodded. Leia ran her gloved hands over the folded paper. “The Avatar is the symbol of hope for many in these times. Even the people of the Fire Nation have not forgotten that.”

Leia, finding a quiet spot on a scrap of island near the Falcon, unfolded the letter. She closed her eyes, remembering a teenage girl with hair dyed a riot of hideous colours, struggling through the snow in a long and cumbersome red cloak. Where the daughter of a simple ship-builder had acquired such ridiculous tastes, she would never understand. Leia had finally convinced Amilyn to put on a pair of trousers and boots, and they had spent the weeks, Cassian gone on another of his long missions, climbing the glaciers and talking. Though strange and foreign to her, Amilyn had been kind, telling her about ideas for smuggling aid to Alderaan. Kissing her beneath the Southern Lights – it hadn’t been love yet, just a comfort in the horrible blankness of the War. Even though Amilyn was red, red as Han was, born from a land of fire, Leia had wanted her then, wanted Han now, all the same.

She had thought Amilyn dead, for a long time.

Leia opened her eyes and began to read.

 _Dear Leia,_ Amilyn wrote, _When I found out you were the Avatar, everything about your aura made perfect sense!_

Leia snorted internally to herself, carrying on.

_After the occupation, my family and I had to run. Along the way, we fell in with nobles and peasants alike beginning to rise up. I met Mon and Riyo there. For a rich lady, Riyo and her family are quite nice. They used to know the royal family of Naboo - wasn't your mum from there? I hoped that since she was connected to the outside world, she could pass a letter on to you._

_But then there was news that the Avatar died._

Leia went still.

_So now I am writing to someone who is gone. The priests in the temples talk about dragons and reincarnation and ferrymen, and I used to talk to you about auras and chakras and transcending our physical form, but the truth is, I know that you are gone, forever. The Avatar is dead and you will never reincarnate and perhaps remember me, even if it is in your next life, and no amount of ugly crystals and hair and words of fortune will change that._

She began to sob, little choked noises that she kept trying to hold back.

_Leia, I wish we had a chance to see each other again, when the War is won. I would show you the Fire Nation. It’s a horrible country, I know, and you hate it. Volcanoes, and war, and suffering and oppression._

Yes, Leia thought, but I saw your home, and I never thought a place like this could be so green.

_But there’s so much else as well, Leia. Beautiful temples of white marble – remember when we searched for the old shrine of Fest and got stuck in the leopard-seal cave? – beaches of soft sand, grapes as big as your thumb, island chains and tropical forests, lava tubes and high peaks of snow. I would take your hand, Leia, and walk with you across Gatalenta’s rolling green hills, and I would tell you stories about the dragons that live in the stars, and the smith that hammers in the heart of the volcanoes. We would kiss in front of them, and I wish that you would fall in love with my country as much I have with you and with yours._

She’s crying so hard she can barely read what Amilyn has written.

_I think of you often. I do not know, for all I’ve read, about what happens to a soul like yours if it cannot reincarnate. Will you be trapped, forever, wandering the earth? Will your soul be stuck in the Spirit World? I dreamt of you, the night the Fire Lord made the announcement. You were young, again, in your white-and-blue dress, running through the white snow. In that moment, my mind must have been open enough to reach the Spirit World. “This era is over,” you told me. “But you must go on.”_

Something had died, that night in Mon Cala. Perhaps that was what Amilyn had seen, the person she had been.

 _Goodbye, Leia_ , Amilyn wrote, _I will build a statue of you, when we take the throne and change the Fire Nation, of the last Avatar. You’d probably hate it, and say it’s tacky, and silly-looking, but I want, when I am gone too, someone to remember, that briefly you walked upon this earth and made impossible things happen._

Leia folded the letter over, allowing her sobs to wrack her body until they finished. She had always hated the Fire Nation, this land that her own ancestry has come from, that her father helps to rule. She’d expected a red country, a place of people who yellow eyes and burning skin. A part of it is.

It’s the colour of war, and it’s the colour of hate.

It’s the colour of courage, and it’s the colour of strength.

It’s Amilyn’s country, and Mon’s, and Riyo’s, and the villagers, trying to survive. It’s Jyn’s country, who was, for a short while, her friend, her family.

Cassian found Leia bending earth near the isolated cove. She’d been training with Chirrut. He could hear her frustration. Many of the earthbending stances required closed fists. Neither she nor Luke could fully close their burnt hands. “I know what you’re going to say,” she snapped. She’d probably seismically sensed him approach. “You’re going to say the right thing to do is to leave, to do nothing.”

He was silent, only sitting down on one of the rocks. Leia whirled on him. “I hate them so much, Cassian. I really do. I’m the Avatar, Cassian, and… I’m _their_ Avatar, too. I have to be better than -” Her voice broke.

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

Leia sat down next to him. They looked out at the black-glass ocean. “Do you remember,” Cassian said, “When you were five, and I took you out on the canoe?”

“I started crying,” Leia smiled, “I kept saying the ocean was going to swallow me whole. You were a very patient twelve-year-old.”

“Two little sisters.” He paused, tried to sit with that grief. “That was fourteen years ago. I should have done that more often.”

 _Fourteen years._ He had known Leia for fifteen, had been a soldier already by then. They stared out at the depthless ocean. He could understand Leia’s young fears. It gave their home life, rich with fish and ocean plants, but it took, oh, it took.

“I have to tell you something.”

It was so hard. Every word, from a quiet man, felt like it had to be forced through. But it needed to be said. He started and stopped. There were names he could not remember, things had had done that he didn’t want to think about. Their death and rebirth were still the hardest for him to speak of. How his blood-stained hands had achieved the impossible. When he was done, Leia only stared out at the glowing water, the algae leaving trailing waves of impossible colours.

“What did you want?”

“What?”

She shook her head. “I said that wrong. I meant, you, they let you do that. And you were a kid. I know you want to end the War, that you wanted the raids to stop, but – what did _you_ want? What kept you going?”

 _I don’t want to die like this, either_ , he had told Jyn.

“I didn’t think I was going to live to see its end,” he murmured, “I never expected to be in this position.”

“But you’re going to live,” and she said it with such conviction that Cassian half-believed her. The scales could never be evened.

“Movement isn’t always meaning,” he said quietly, “I’m not a tiger-shark. And neither are you.”

Leia’s eyes dropped. “No. I suppose not.”

Cassian thought of Lothal, of Savareen, of the hundreds of places where he had done nothing, had killed decent, even good, people for something bigger. “Ending the War…it has to be worth more than dead bodies in the streets. We have to _end_ the War. Not anarchy, or a power vacuum...”

Cassian had felt Chuchi’s disgust at him – the eternal soldier. How easy it was for her to make judgment. She’d never had to make the choices that he had.

All the same. When would he come back from the War? When would any of them, Jyn, Obi Wan, Bodhi, on and on, crushed beneath nearly twenty-five years, if you counted the Separatist Wars too?

"The cycle has to end," he finished, surprised by his own words. He stood, a plan already forming in his mind.

“Cassian, wait.” He met Leia’s eyes. “Thank you."

"What?"

"You saved my life," she said, "You saved my _life._ I can't... I don't know how to express...”

He thought of a little girl, her brown eyes warm and bright, tripping over her overly-large fur poncho. The little tassels of her _chullo_ , covering her ears, jiggled. _Wait!_ She had cried, _Cah-see-an!_ _Wait! I wanna come too!_

“Of course I would. Because...you're... you... are family,” he whispered.

Leia's entire face softened, and before he could stop her, she'd thrown her arms around his neck and hugged him, clinging to him like a drowning man. Cassian relaxed his body, patting her back as carefully as he could. 

“I know you've never thought about the future," she said, pulling away, "So I'm telling you right now. I’ll always be here. Always. When the War is won. Even if all we can do is stare at the ocean, I’m going to be there. If you would let me.”

It was still easy to believe that nothing would change. That War was endless and the whole world was so hungry. Bodhi was gone. Jyn had betrayed him, and was gone. Leia couldn’t offer him absolution. No one could.

And maybe there was no absolution.

But there was a factory. There were a hundred hungry souls. And there was his little sister. He gave a small smile. “Want to blow up the Fire Nation war machine?”

Leia grinned.

“Um, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Leia said, as she pinned her veil to Cassian’s head.

“The people believe their Spirit has abandoned them. But if we were to get them to believe that she had not, that there was still someone who cared, they might be convinced to rise up,” Cassian said.

She looked at his disguise critically. The robe they’d fashioned from the remnants of some old clothes hung off Cassian’s very obvious male body – square and without any hint of curve. They’d waterbent seaweed into the shape of horns atop his head. With paint, they'd followed the contours and symbols that covered Aach's face. In the darkness, and with enough mist and fog, it was passable. “Maybe we should shave your mustache off."

"Don't you dare."

"See, that's why _I_ should be pretending to be Aach.”

“Because if they catch me, they’re catching a random waterbender. Not the supposedly dead Avatar.”

Leia stopped immediately. “No! No, absolutely not! Cassian, they’ll imprison you! With all the other captive waterbenders, none of them ever made it! No one has ever come back from those prisons!”

“Then what would you have us do? Leave? Do nothing? It’s time to do -” _Some of us just decided to do something._ He cleared his throat, deliberately lightening his tone. “Anyways, we need your earth and airbending. Also, I’m a better waterbender.”

“I’m the Avatar, I’m a better bender by default,” Leia snapped.

“That’s not how bending works.”

“Are you two sneaking out?”

They jumped apart to see Luke standing on the riverbank. “Pretty smart to disguise yourself, Cassian. Unless they see your moustache,” he said. “Sorry, I was…eavesdropping. I was looking for you.”

Leia stilled. She didn’t want to look at him. _The Avatar fell_ – Luke, kind Luke, always better than her that way. “Do you want,” she said tightly, avoiding his eyes, “To help us? Whatever they believe, slow death isn’t justice.”

Silence.

Then, “If you want me to.”

Pressing her lips together, she nodded. He walked over, helping her with Cassian’s costume. “So, what’s the plan?”

They watched him with hungry eyes, the eyes of the people of Mon Cala, Jedha, Savareen, Lothal, a hundred thousand cities.

He’d bent a massive wave to crest himself through the windows. The glass shattered. They gasped, awe, something like hope, or desperation in their eyes. Outside, Luke and Leia bent wind and water, forming a fog around his feet and face. In the darkness, he was nothing but a pale shadowy in a white dress, like Mon Mothma's own. Cassian had frozen a small ledge against the wall. To these people, he seemed to be floating. Soldiers charged towards him. With two flicks, he water-whipped them aside.

 _Aach_ , he heard them call below. _She has come for us, she has come!_

“Save us,” someone whispered.

Leia’s voice, soundbent, echoed through the factory. “You have kept your heads down all this time – you have turned your backs on each other, and on the world!”

He saw people shuffle, glancing at each other. Was it too much?

Then another voice rang out. Enfys. “I am here to tell you the Spirits _are_ with you! This is your home! And if you have the will, you can take back your homes, your livelihood, your freedom.”

The foundations of the factory began to shake. Earthbending. Chirrut. And surely, Baze, and Han. It was time to lean into the mysticism. With another flick, Cassian bent the mist, freezing over the molten metal. He brought his hands together in a clap reminiscent of a firebender’s snapping flame. The ice pushed against the vats, shattering them.

“With each other you are stronger than you could ever know! There are more of us than there are of them! Take your destiny into your own hands!”

Nobody moved. He remembered the prison camp on Lothal, a Fire Nation official crowing, _their spirits were broken long ago._

There was a faint gurgling sound. It was the woman Leia had saved. She had brought her hammer down on the head of a guard. The guard sank down, dead. Her eyes met his. She nodded.

Chaos broke out. The villagers were rising up, throwing themselves against the soldiers. Hammers, tools, fists, met fire. On the wind, he heard a whisper.

“You need us,” Leia said, “And we will never turn our back on you.”

The factory was burning. The remaining soldiers had fled, preparing to burn the villagers’ homes and bridges. Scout troopers, lightly armoured, dressed mostly in dark beaten leather and cloth, piloted some kind of miniaturized boats that seated two. More new Fire Nation technology. They were flimsy, though. The villagers ran after them, screaming and throwing stones. His friends had been planning to sneak away once the villagers fought back. They hadn’t anticipated this.

Cassian froze the water beneath his feet, pursuing them towards the village. With a wave of his hands, he pulled mist up around him.

He had to end what he had started.

A shout rang out. The troopers had seen him. Their fear was palpable. He surfed forward, easily snaking between fire blasts like an eel. With one strike, Cassian sent one of the boats into the cliff-side. It exploded into flames.

He raised a hand. Several scout troopers fled. There were more on the village dock, armed. Cassian wind-milled both arms in a slice. Water tore through the dock. The troopers cried out as they plunged into the river. He surged towards them. From their hiding place, Enfys’ soundbent voice rang out: “Leave this village, and never return!”

A trooper snarled, turning hateful eyes upon him. Cassian reared back as he drew up a wave to block the flames. The fog dropped. He sent the wave straight through the man’s chest. He heard someone yell, “It’s those colonials! He’s a waterbender!”

Voices were rising. In the crowd he saw Chuchi and Mothma, trying to quell the anger.

If he fled now, their anger would be ten-fold. He'd be another Water Tribe demon, adopting the face of their beloved Spirit. His friends landed on the dock as Cassian joined them. He pulled off the disguise. Leia stepped in front of him protectively, flanked by the others. “You're a liar!" someone yelled, "Go back where you -"

"So, he’s a waterbender,” Baze snapped, “He tried to help. He destroyed that factory, _for_ you! He saved your village! You should be down on your knees, thanking him!”

People were yelling. Mon shoved her way to the front. “They did what we, myself included, were too afraid to do. Aach might not be real, but your misery is. They were the only ones who saw we had to do something! This cannot continue – we must take back our lives from a system that has abandoned us as much as it has hurt them! Let go of your prejudice and hatred!”

"Have you no honour to scorn the very people who laid their lives on the line for you?" Riyo added.

Cassian saw embarrassment and shame on these pale faces. Some drew closer, touching his shoulders, as though afraid the Water Tribe were spirits too. He hated them, but his pity was stronger than his rage.

“The greatest illusion,” Mon said, “Is the illusion of separation.”

"But then what should we do?"

The woman Leia had saved raised her hammer. "We clean our reef. Ocean man, we would be honoured if you could help us."

Cassian raised an eyebrow. He raised both hands, fingers taught with power. An orb of water, large as an elephant koi, drew up from the water. Fish still swam inside, panicked. Chirrut dug his feet into the dirt, peeling mineral and metal from the water. At that, the loudest dissenters finally went quiet.

And so, they cleaned the reef.

Townsfolk came up and talked to them as they worked. Their questions were often insensitive or prejudiced. They asked questions: do the Air Nomads have a secret army, and are lying about being pacifists? Do they eat humans in the Earth Kingdom? Do the Water Tribes slaughter men indiscriminately?

They kept having to stop people from touching Enfys’ hair. But Cassian saw how they began to talk about the end of the War, about discontent in the Fire Nation. This was what rebuilding was going to look like, Cassian realised. Talk about trading with the Water Tribes, or the Earth Kingdom. The old people spoke of days long gone by, of friends in far-flung places, and he saw the young people listening.

He allowed himself to imagine being part of it, trying to heal the horrors of twenty years of War.

“Your waterbending is incredible,” one woman marvelled, as he and Chirrut worked in tandem to peel the filth from the water. “You know, they always tell us that firebending is the strongest bending power. That's why we're winning the War. But that's not true." 

"If you seek wisdom and power from only source, you will grow rigid and stale," Chirrut opined. The villagers listening nodded thoughtfully.

"So what else can you do?" a few children demanded, pulling at his trousers.

"Uh... I can sink a warship?" Cassian said, considering. That instantly had the children chattering, tussling one another as they insisted they were the 'Master Waterbender'. Cassian allowed himself a smile, watching as Enfys bent little eddies for them to chase.

It was nightfall by the time they finished. Leia had handed Mon a letter before she and Chuchi left. "Please, give it to Amilyn if you can."

The group settled down in their campsite to make dinner before leaving. Holding the cookpot to his hip, Cassian walked over to the water. He began bending water into the cookpot when shining surf began to swirl around his feet. He looked up.

Aach, her glowing, iridescent hair swirling around her white dress. She smiled, the patterns of waves on her face creasing. She had not come for her people when her land was poisoned, but she was here now, fathomless and unknowable. “Thank you,” she told him.

Cassian stared as she disappeared. Then he grinned, turning and heading back to his friends.

Jyn had done little. Bodhi was ignoring her. She had half a mind to break into the prison just to see him. She practiced firebending in the courtyard every day. Trying to find forms from the other Nations that worked. None ever seemed to.

She couldn’t bring herself to make the fire serpent Cassian had said looked like waterbending.

Other days she wandered through Coruscant. Versio was bored by her babysitting duty. In exchange for Jyn keeping quiet, Versio could spend time drilling and working with the Coruscant militia and intelligence units. That suited Jyn fine. She doubted Versio had ever wandered into the lower levels of Coruscant.

The Fire Lord had cleaned up much of the rot of bounty hunting, human trafficking, brothels, and crime that had infested Coruscant in the twilight of the Alliance. Of course, what had replaced it wasn’t much better. Jyn heard talk of the increased rationing, and starvation as she wandered through. The secret police. People who murmured they should sue for peace, that the broken men and soot in their lungs from factories wasn't worth it, disappearing in the night. Families torn apart and crippled men coming back. The brothels weren’t all gone either – Sidious didn’t care one coin about women. Now the exploited women just serviced the troops.

Jyn burnt the first man who asked her, down on District 1313, if she was for sale too. She wanted to burn the whole place down. But what could she do? She couldn't give them food or trade skills or a roof over their heads, and that was what they needed most.

But most days were just ennui. By Sól, she would beg blinkered Iden Versio for company if this didn’t end. But when Versio came in one morning, as Jyn sat with her feet in the courtyard pond, staring at nothing, her jailer's face was stiff. “Lord Vader calls upon you to accompany him for tea.”

I’m dead, Jyn thought. The Fire Lord knows I’m sneaking around. “Wonderful,” Jyn said tightly, “Tell the messenger -”

“Vader’s outside,” Iden said in a rush, “He means to come in _here_.”

Jyn scrambled out of the pond, hissing, “Get the wine and I don’t know, grapes or olives or something. If he eats. Does Vader eat in public?”

“How would I know that? I’ve never met him! For Sól’s sake, put a veil on before he kills us!” Iden bit back.

Jyn had no idea if that were true. But there were enough rumours that Vader had murdered any woman who thought they could become the next Lady of the Fire Nation. Or any woman who so much as looked sideways at him. Her hatred for Vader grew tenfold.

She rushed to her room, taking stock of her appearance. Her legs were damp, water from her pond had matted down her leg hair. Jyn dried them off as best she could. Well, if Vader looked at her legs, she would burn him and suffer the consequences. She would rather be dead than looked at by him. He was the father of her frien - Jyn pinned her veil to her hair with shaking fingers. She owned no makeup and was not about to start now. Jyn made royal progress to the office, doing her best to keep her posture neutral.

Vader sat in the guest chair. Jyn got the distinct impression he was uncomfortable. Iden had placed the food on the desk and hovered by the doorway. Vader made no move towards it. She wondered what he looked beneath the helmet and faceplate. Like Luke, or Leia? The broken bodies, Cassian’s eyes – She poured them each a goblet of wine with shaking hands. Then she picked up hers and said, as steadily as possible, “It is a great honour, Lord Vader.”

Vader said nothing. Jyn met Iden’s gaze across the room and saw her naked fear. Somehow this comforted her. “To what do I owe the pleasure, my Lord?”

At last, Vader spoke. “You travelled with the Avatar. You were in the crystal catacombs of Mon Cala.”

Jyn understood the doublespeak. “I was, my Lord. But I am loyal to -”

“Spare me the flattery,” Vader snapped. “You knew them. Thrawn’s spies say you lived together for some time.” Jyn kept her face blank as she nodded. The goblet in her hand shook very slightly. “They… Tell me what they… You _knew_ them.”

And then Jyn understood what this pathetic, monstrous man could not say.

I didn’t know them, Jyn wanted to say. I was too obsessed with myself.

But she knew that Leia loved salted fish and bought dried meat on every market day because it reminded her of her destroyed home. She knew Luke had told her stories about eating bugs as Tatooine cuisine (she _thought_ he was joking?). She knew Luke thought puns were funny, and Leia couldn’t tell a joke to save her life. She knew Leia talked in her sleep and only Han or Cassian could get Luke out of bed. She knew how Leia and her had walked all over Mon Cala, Leia’s voice bringing her from her shell. She knew how Luke smiled whenever she was unintentionally kind.

She knew how Baze and Chirrut laughed at the same jokes. How Han would snap and grumble but offer help. How Enfys was so easy and gentle, playfully braiding her hair. How Bodhi got flustered and anxious, but always, always was there. She knew how Cassian’s eyes looked under the stars, in the rain, in the Crystal Catacombs as he had leant forward.

“They were good,” Jyn said softly, “Kind, generous. Quick-tempered, but easy with their affection. Bull-headed. They loved sparring. Leia was less trusting, but she was so good with people. It took her long time to really befriend them, though. Luke made friends easily. He always wanted… to do the next right thing, wanted to help.”

Vader was silent. Jyn downed the entire goblet. She poured more. It was going to become a habit. Then Vader said, “You were fond of them.”

Jyn made a non-committal sound. “You betrayed them. You betrayed their beliefs. You chose the Earth Kingdom conscript’s life.”

“I knew the Avatar for two months,” Jyn said, feeling as though she would be sick, “That isn’t much to nine years. There’s little I wouldn’t do for Bodhi.”

Vader watched her through that expressionless mask. Then, “That is not always an understood sentiment.”

Jyn abruptly felt as though she had stumbled into something painfully personal. Her voice trembled as she said, “I pray that when the War is won, our benevolent Fire Lord shall grant Bodhi mercy so he might live with me.”

“That is a noble feeling.”

Perhaps a month ago she would have flinched from this statement.

But Jyn could not blind herself any longer. _Things would never have gone back to normal_ , Cassian had said. And then what, she had asked, over and over, as though Bodhi would consent to live with her and Galen when the Fire Lord conquered the world, and they could play house.

Jyn looked at Vader, and saw herself.

Vader leant forward. Perhaps he didn’t like being stared at. “But their company was not all good and fair. They travelled with a Water Tribe man.”

She went very still. She didn’t trust herself to react.

“There are intelligence reports on him. He worked as a spy. He was a killer. They called him a friend.”

What a pathetic, pitiful creature. Jyn knew how to keep her tongue. But the anger snapped out, like the splitting of air in the summer storms that brought a heady, electrifying rush of rain.

“He will _always_ be better than you,” she hissed, and waited for death.

She heard a chair scrape backwards. Jyn flinched as Vader stood. Without another a word, he left. Jyn slumped over on the table. She felt hysterical. Why had Vader spared her life? Why had he even been asking after Cassian?

Iden sat down, shaking like a leaf. She poured herself a generous amount of wine, and said, “Oh by Sól, we survived that. I can’t believe he didn’t kill us; I was shitting bricks the whole time. What were you thinking, idiot?”

Jyn sputtered, spraying her wine on the table. "I think I'm going to vomit."

Iden snorted, but she drank deeply. “Oh, this is absolute _piss_. You don't have any of the good stuff?”

The two women looked at each other. They hated each other. They were also alone in the world. Some things were simple. Jyn raised her glass, “Drain Krennic dry.”

Iden laughed.

Vader watched as Sidious listened to the report. Why had he spared the girl? Her firebending was nothing special. She had fulfilled her purpose. Krennic kept her around, like a caged animal. Her impudence justified execution.

_He will **always** be better than you._

_You’re a good person, Anakin, please, come back!_

“The work of _Spirits_?”

He raised his head. The Fire Lord was snarling at some snivelling bureaucrats. “These…revolutionaries! And you mean to tell me that we cannot find anything of their leaders? Just these rumours of _Spirits_? Of a woman in a white dress? Listen to the report yourself – moving water, fog, mist.”

Sidious pointed a finger at the man. “They’ve got a _waterbender_.”

The first pinprick of suspicion made itself felt. “My Lord, I may know something about that…”


	33. Book Three: Rebirth IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what the most difficult thing about writing this fic is? There are no blasters, and Han is just SUCH a blaster guy. And unless Han invents a glock in this fic, they're at least a couple of hundred years before they get hand-guns. So... let's stretch our suspension of disbelief a little here...

It was a warm summer night. Jyn lay on one of the dining room chairs. Her soft pink dress was cotton, though her skin still felt sticky. Every night she dreamt of Bodhi’s face in the glowing crystal catacomb. The fall from space. A house, a group, and a man with dark eyes, blank as silver coins. Every night she lay here, waiting until she was too exhausted for nightmares. Often, she fell asleep on the floor somewhere in the house.

Bodhi hadn’t responded to her letters.

A glass bottle clinked down on the table next to her. Jyn rolled over. Iden gave her a tense smile. There were stark lines under her eyes. Nodding in greeting, Jyn sat up. She uncorked the bottle and sniffed. The alcohol had a milky colour and thickness. “What is this, and where did you get it?”

Iden emerged with two goblets. Jyn served them. “Drink first,” Iden said. Jyn took a large gulp. The alcohol had a sour but not unpleasant taste, though the texture was somewhat slimy. “Good, right?” Iden continued, draining her own goblet. “It’s Southern Water Tribe alcohol, from Fest. They call it _pulque_. Sacred to their culture and all. Drink up, because they’re not going to be producing any of it for a _long_ time.”

Jyn wanted to vomit up everything she had swallowed. She thought of their dark eyes on her, of how there had been a horrible, hidden part of her so close to reducing it all to dust the day she had invaded. Cassian’s people. Instead, she said, downing more, “I was there, once. Last winter. I knew someone from Fest.”

“When you were off trying to capture the Avatar.” Jyn had the curious feeling that Iden was trying to goad some reaction out of her. Iden had shed her outer jacket to reveal her breast wrap underneath. Jyn’s mouth felt sticky.

“Yeah,” Jyn said softly, “Back then.”

“Why did you do it?”

Jyn poured herself more _pulque_. She should have rejected it on moral principles. _I have to make it right,_ Bodhi was always saying. Life. She’d saved his life. Her hands shook as she downed as much as she could, until her head rang like a gong. “I wanted to save my father.”

Iden considered this. “Your Father designed the Death Star, and was one of our nation’s great treasures. That makes you a traitor.”

“Wow. Is _that_ why I have a guard?” Iden laughed, but there was something hunted in her face, too. “Sorry that I’m taking you away from your Inferno Squad duty. Fuck, that’s such a stupid name,” Jyn continued.

“Fuck you. And don’t be.” The other woman was looking at her hands. Jyn clumsily grabbed her shoulder, and said, “What’s Daddy Versio making you do, anyways?”

It was testament to the alcohol that Iden didn’t round on her. She said thickly, “You knew Saw Gerrera, didn’t you?” Jyn nodded. “Inferno Squad was designed to infiltrate a Rebel Cell, and obtain information on what the forces of the Three Nations were planning against us. We infiltrated Saw Gerrera’s Partisans.”

There was a wealth of information unspoken: that she had been chosen because of her heritage by her own father, that she had found herself in a place where she had to meet an enemy who loved her as their own, that she had seen the Earth Kingdom, and how it had been brought low…

Jyn only touched Iden’s cheek, the alcohol loosening her inhibitions and disgust. “If you can’t sleep, you can come to my room, you know. No promises I won’t suffocate you with my pillow, though.”

She felt Iden’s warm, sticky lips on hers. Then Iden drew back, her face shuttering.

Jyn had kissed her share of women. Iden was beautiful, powerful. And she was adrift in a great sea. _She chooses the memory._ It would be so, so easy…

Jyn shook her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m… I…”

“There’s someone else, isn’t there?” Something like relief crossed Iden’s face that Jyn had not lashed out. “Well, me too. Unlucky, both of us. This is depressing, Erso.”

Jyn laughed awkwardly. They drank, and they talked about nothing. Her head spun. Jyn slumped forward, resting her face against the dining chair. Somewhere, in the fog, she heard Iden say, “It’s the person from Fest that you love, isn’t it? I could see it on your face…”

 _Trust goes both ways._ A dagger, spinning in her hand in the darkness. Somewhere, in the skies and seas as she had chased them endlessly. **_Oh_** , Jyn thought. _It must have begun then…_

“They’re saying there’s riots in the Outer Islands… Esseles… Spirits rising up with the people,” Iden slurred, “Making the water move, washing away the factories, the ships… Led by a Spirit in a white dress…”

_Cassian. They’re here. For the Day of Black Sun._

She remembered a library beneath the shifting sands, a dark face telling her to run. In the moments before she passed out, Jyn heard herself asking, “Was it beautiful? Jedha… They burnt it…they burnt it all.”

Iden touched her face with clumsy hands. She was crying, Jyn registered dimly. “Why did they do that, Jyn? _Why?_ The people of Jedha – little sister, little sister they kept saying, and the troops, they just -”

“They existed… Oh, Saw, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Jyn whispered, fading into darkness.

Bodhi stared at the pile of letters accusingly as he ate his prison gruel. The guard had come with another one today. Kyle was slurping his bowl of porridge up heartily. “Wife sending those to you?”

“I’m not married, and I’m not attracted to women,” Bodhi muttered, pushing the letters aside with his foot. “And it’s not a boyfriend either. Stop asking.”

Kyle raised an eyebrow. “Your mother, then? Though what she’d been doing here…”

“My mother is…” Bodhi had no idea. Enfys, dear Enfys, had gotten his family out, but now they had to make it on their own. Spirits, he missed Enfys so much. He swallowed thickly, fixing his eyes on his bowl. “A r-refugee. In the Earth Kingdom. With the rest of my family.”

“So, who’s trying to get your attention so badly?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Yeah, and we’re stuck together for probably the rest of our lives until the Fire Nation burns to the ground, since we haven’t figured out how to get out of here. So.”

Bodhi paused. Spirits, he was going insane trusting this filthy, no-morals man. Stealing from the Jedi for power. Sighing, he scooted himself closer to the cell bars. “Ever heard of the Death Star project?”

Kyle listened attentively to the entire story. Something crossed his face when Bodhi said Jyn’s name, but he said nothing, chin resting on his palm. “So, when did you adopt her, after she abandoned you in the middle of nowhere, or when she ignored what you wanted?” he asked, pillowing his arms behind his head as he leaned against the wall.

“I… what – that is not – I don’t care about Jyn Erso anymore!” Bodhi sputtered. Kyle’s eyes dropped to the pile of letters and back to his face. “Oh, what would you know? You’re in here because you wanted to be a better firebender or something.”

The other man sat up, brow furrowing. “It’s not that simple. The very way we bend is…corrupted. Your emotions can make bending stronger, but we’re taught to use our anger and hate. Do you know how soul-destroying – ugh, bending is a part of you, okay? Forgive me for wanting to do better and not be a sociopath,” he said, holding up his hands and lying down on the cell floor.

Unbidden, the image of Jyn firebending came to mind. The way she threaded fire between her fingers, like a dancing serpent. _“What does it feel like?”_ he’d asked.

 _“Awful,”_ she’d said, staring at the flame until it stung her own fingertips.

“Where’d you even get the idea to find a better source?” Bodhi said aloud.

“See, that’s where I got in trouble,” Kyle said, voice muffled with one arm over his face, “I…kinda broke into the Palace Library.”

He paused. “Are you waiting for me to compliment you?” Bodhi deadpanned.

Kyle huffed. “Anyways. There’s stuff in there, I don’t know where old Palpatine got it. But see – that’s why I sat up when I heard your girl’s name. The person who wrote about looking for an old way of firebending – her name was Lyra Erso.”

“What? Was there anything in there?” Kyle shook his head. “If there’s anything…it must be in the house. It’s in Jyn’s house! It’s right there with her…”

“Gotcha.” Bodhi stared at Kyle, stupefied. “Your girl got you thrown in jail, and I can see right here, you’re thinking of how you can help her come back to the ‘Light Side’,” Kyle said scathingly.

Bodhi leapt to his feet. “I’m in jail because of _your_ bloody country! I didn’t want anything to do with it. My mother and sisters are probably starving because I can’t send money back to them and they’re who knows where in the Earth Kingdom? But you have the nerve to judge me when you’re in here because you wanted power -”

“They killed my father! The Fire Nation killed my father.”

Kyle had sat up, gripping the bars with white-knuckled fingers. Bodhi stopped cold. Flushing, he rubbed the back of his neck and sat back down. “You didn’t say,” he said lamely.

“Not really a first jail-day conversation,” Kyle muttered, picking at his nails and feigning disinterest.

“Well…that’s something we have in common,” Bodhi said in a quieter voice. “I don’t even remember him. He died the day Jedha fell.” He closed his eyes. “But I’ll never forget what the city looked like that day. There were just…pieces of people left after the cannons sounded.”

“They put his head on a pike,” Kyle said, “Born in Sullust before it was occupied. Turns out he was helping out the Earth Kingdom people there.”

They looked at each other. “Truce?” Bodhi said, extending a hand through the bars. “It’s just…”

“Hey, you don’t need to explain that people with my face did this,” Kyle said. He paused, raising a palm. Fire threaded between his fingers, forming a serpentine creature. The fire floated through the gap between their cells, spiralling around Bodhi’s wrist. “Truce.”

Bodhi laughed tiredly. It was a pretty neat trick, he supposed. For a firebender. Still, he couldn’t shake the relevation from his mind. Lyra Erso. Kyle frowned. “Even after all that, you still have compassion for her?”

“Well, that’s the thing about love, isn’t it?” Bodhi sighed. He hated that about himself. The worst part was that Jyn wasn't even an evil person. It would be easy to hate her, then. 

“It fucking sucks?”

“Yeah,” Bodhi laughed sadly again, “So…any ideas about how to bust out of here?”

They’d moved on from Esseles. Now they were on the Fire Nation island of Vendaxa. And of course, Cassian had said it was ‘too dangerous’ to go into the much wealthier, educated town nearby, so they were camping in the wilderness. Small problem – Vendaxa’s wildlife got _big_. Too many fertile plants and sunlight was Han’s guess. This might be his fatherland, but so far it was seeming like a pretty crap place to live. Poverty, inequality, _imminent death_ –

Everyone was yelling as a giant land squid swung its barbed tentacles. Earth, water, and air attacks rained down. Baze’s explosives were doing damage. And him? Leia had tossed over Threepio and said to keep an eye on the animals. “What am I, the pet sitter?” Han demanded. Threepio made a frightened noise. “There, there,” he added grumpily, petting the bird as he herded Chewie, Kay and Artoo away. It was like Tatooine or Bespin all over again.

Except this time, when the Day of Black Sun came, the others might actually be dead, burnt to a crisp by the Fire Lord trying to keep him safe, because he’d be damned if he waited with the Falcon.

In moments, it was over. The squid had retreated frantically into whatever underground thrice-cursed-hole it spawned from. “Great work team!” Luke said.

Han grunted, scowling at Chewie’s meaningful look.

The next morning, the group ate at one of the local taverns. Vendaxa seemed more of a pleasure town than anything. Han could feel everyone’s gaze on them, thick and poisonous. Mon Mothma had better take all of these socialites’ wealth to rebuild the Fire Nation, he thought. The tavern owner was scowling at them, folding her arms in disgust. “We don’t serve colonials here,” she snapped.

Leia smiled dimly, switching into accented Fire Nation. “I was born in Coruscant actually, Lora Kobadi – distant relation of the Chuchi’s? You must have heard of them…” The tavern owner was swiftly backpedalling, “These are my brothers,” she gestured to Luke and him, “And my husband,” she gripped Cassian’s arm and simpered, “And these three are my servants. Good, strong Earth Kingdom labour – why, my nanny here suckled me from the teat. They’re like family.”

The tavern owner’s glare was harshest upon Enfys before she reluctantly let them in, smoothened by the gold Leia flashed (that the gold had been lifted from the factory at Esseles was neither here nor there).

They were escorted to one of the outdoor tables at the back – probably not to scare off the other clientele. Han resisted the urge to spit. He did hear the tavern owner curse as she walked them over, stubbing her toe on a mysterious piece of rock that hadn’t been there before.

“You should be careful, my Lady, on your travel to Coruscant,” the tavern owner continued, as she served them, “The factories in Esseles blew up recently, and I heard word that Chandrila, the farmers, they’re refusing to keep working to feed our troops! They’re saying the white lady, Aach, wants change.”

The tavern owner shook her head in disgust as she left. “Is this a good thing?” Luke asked.

“Chandrila is the Fire Nation’s main agricultural source. I’m guessing they’ve been rationing to starvation levels to feed their army,” Cassian said in a low voice, “It’s good for us. The Fire Nation rebels and us have sown the seeds for a fight at home.”

“And they can’t trace it back if it begins exploding all over the place, wearing different faces,” Leia added.

“It’s a good Earth Kingdom military strategy,” Baze agreed, “Did some fighting with the local militias after… They were too well dug-in so there’d be too high a civilian cost. But we disrupted their supply lines, their watch-towers, broke up a lot of their small bases, until there was too damage everywhere for them to fight.”

“I just worry about Death Star,” Luke said, making all of them freeze, “I have a bad feeling. People are going to get hurt.”

“Like Vader,” Leia said under her breath. Luke averted his gaze.

Enfys, who had been silent, spoke up. “People are already getting hurt. My people, your people -”

“They’re not my people -”

“Aren’t they?” Luke, Leia, and Han went quiet. “The difference is whether they die fighting or cowering behind the rot they so desperately believe in. Who’s going to take the throne otherwise? You and Leia?”

“We’ll need all the unrest possible for the Day of Black Sun,” Cassian said, which seemed to break the stalemate. They began talking about the invasion in the Earth Kingdom tongue they all knew. Han reached over and helped Leia pick the fish off the bones. He didn’t understand why she loved bony fish so much. She smiled gratefully, but there was frustration in her eyes as she rubbed her burnt hand. Even the simplest tasks were now impossible for her.

Han had never hated Vader more. What sick monster crippled his own child?

They’d have to face him down on the Day of Black Sun. He shivered. Jabba’s Palace, chained like a fucking animal… the terror, the humiliation. In the summer heat, the invasion felt days instead of weeks away. He felt Leia touch his hand. “What’s wrong?” she asked. He intertwined his fingers gently around her gloved, damaged hand, wishing he could stroke the scar tissue, make it all go away.

“What am I gonna do when the Invasion comes?” he said, “No magic water or dirt…”

“I can’t bend either,” Baze pointed out.

Han looked meaningfully at him. “I don’t want to die,” he said bluntly, “And I wanna help out and end the War, but I can’t figure how I’m gonna _do_ that.”

“We all have each other’s backs. Team Avatar is ten – I mean, eight,” she corrected. Everybody shifted uncomfortably. Han noticed Cassian stop eating abruptly.

“I miss Jyn and Bodhi,” Luke murmured.

“Jyn betrayed us, _and_ Bodhi,” Leia snapped, but he didn’t think she fully believed it. “Anyways. I have an idea. What do you say we do something together as a group?”

“Shopping?” Han said, staring at the large weapons shop. Baze clapped him on the shoulder. “If you’re going to go to War, you need a better weapon than that kitchen knife you carry around,” he said.

There were a lot of weapons. Nothing felt quite right in his hands. There were some crossbows that looked promising – and heavy – but he wasn’t going to steal Lando’s thunder. “Another day, gorgeous,” he said, as Leia snorted discreetly into her shoulder.

And then he saw it. It was the most beautiful sword he’d ever seen. Blade long and flat, tapering to a point. Different from the single-edged Mandalorian swords. The short pommel had vine-like carvings, which continued onto the blade. It practically gleamed in the bright light. 

“You’ve a good eye,” the shopkeeper said, “Made by Master Tsabin.” The shopkeeper’s eyes became shifty. “I don’t mean to overstep – I had a son who went to the Earth Kingdom. Lost both legs and an Earth Kingdom girl, she helped him. Can you imagine that? Master Tsabin was generous in helping us. He don’t much like the War. You see all sorts of folks coming up to his villa, begging for him to teach them – the big one up the road.”

“Is that so?” Cassian asked casually, fiddling with a series of daggers.

The shopkeeper leaned closer. “The greatest illusion, is the illusion of separation.”

He shuffled away quickly. Han could practically see the gears turning in Cassian’s head. Sometimes he thought Cassian really needed to just take a break. Did his friend ever sleep? Abruptly, he missed Jyn. She was good at getting Cassian distracted. “A master swordsman would be a good friend to have,” Leia said in a low voice. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, after all.”

“You could go there and ask for lessons, get a feel of him!” Luke said, as Han picked up the sword and examined it. Han considered it. He didn’t find himself a pretty good learner. His years as a Fire Nation cadet could prove that. But this was different. He wasn’t out for himself anymore.

“We’re not endangering Han that way,” Leia said.

“That’s not what -”

“Knock it off, both of you,” Han snapped, “I’m gonna do it. _Me_.”  
  


Leia had definitely been using Han to avoid having to speak with Luke. But now Han was off. Luke had chosen this moment to pounce. She had been feeling much better. The burn no longer required Cassian’s healing, even if she'd never be able to use that hand properly again. Their waterbending at least, was fully restored to previous strength, even if they had to adjust. But the sight of her twin made her stomach roil.

“What is it?” Leia asked, when he approached her. They were taking a break before returning to airbending training, eating the remains of lunch.

“Mon Cala,” Luke said patiently, “I know everything was chaotic, Leia, so we couldn’t talk. But you’re angry at me. I want to know why.”

Leia was silent, chewing. “Vader is a bad man,” she said, her voice carefully modulated.

“I know,” Luke said. “But I forgive him, for burning me.”

“You’re not serious.”

 _Luke is a nice person,_ she had told Jyn months ago. She shoved the thought aside roughly. She didn’t want to dwell on Jyn, or Vader, or the mess her family had turned out to be. She hated how open, warm, her twin’s face was.

“Father… there’s still something left in him, Leia. I know it. There isn’t only evil. He’s not in his right mind. Maybe he was forced to, but I’m sure there’s a good reason –”

“- or maybe there’s not. Maybe he’s just cruel, and spiteful, and he crippled us because he _could_. So, we could ‘rule the world’ with him. There’s no good reason for it, Luke! Stop searching for one!”

Luke twitched. A spiteful part of her relished in it. _You are his child too_ – Leia scowled, shoving more food into her mouth.

“I still think there’s good in him,” Luke said defiantly, “You should too. If you would -”

“Listen to yourself!” Leia said, “It’s _Vader_. Not just us, he hurt _Bodhi_ , Luke. He’s a murderer, a tyrant, he’s playing you! You’ll let your guard down, and he’ll do the same thing when we face him on the Day of Black Sun, and we’ll lose again.”

“I’m not saying we’re going to become a happy family, he deserves to be in prison, but… he’s our _father_ , Leia -”

“And you think that makes any difference? Do you think he will come quietly and let us put him in a cell?”

Luke stared at her, something knifing across his face. At last, “You had compassion for Jyn. You could forgive her.” He paused. “Even now, after everything she did, I forgive her.”

“That’s not the same and you know it.”

Luke chewed his lip. “Okay, it’s not the same at all. Jyn... Jyn is not Vader, even at her lowest.” He looked down at their burnt hands. “But I have compassion for him.”

The words stewed in her. _You just want a father,_ she wanted to scream, _but you can't get that! You never will!_ All she managed to bite out was, “You’re going to regret feeling that way. And I’ll be the one who will have to do the right thing.”

She stalked away, still holding her bowl. She watched Luke grasp the spoon in his left-hand. He was lucky, that he’d been born left-handed. His burnt right hand sat on his lap. She watched Enfys peel an orange for him, handing him the slices. Luke smiled at her, but there was sorrow in his eyes. The burns on her own hand stung at night, even when she applied a salve.

Leia didn’t remember much from her…death. But she remembered Vader’s eyes, just for a split second. Someone might have called it pathetic. He looked like – like –

Luke.

When he had watched Obi Wan die.

She frowned, glancing down.

Baze had offered to go with him, which Han appreciated. He liked their explosives expert. He also knew that Baze was trying to give Chirrut space. After Mon Cala – Han didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to know what Luke and Leia dead looked like. But the old monk was taking things especially hard.

Master Tsabin’s villa was made of some kind of greyish-yellow volcanic rock, with a red roof. The front was set with a heavy wooden door. Han knocked. An older woman, in her late thirties, answered. Like most Fire Nation, she had fair skin and thick, slightly wavy dark hair. She wore a deep red dress, almost black. Her pins, though, Han’s sharp eyes noted, had green jewels. “Can I help you?”

As formally as he could manage, “I’ve come to train with Master Tsabin.”

He could feel her dark, cat-like eyes scrutinizing him. “The Master turns almost all students away. What have you brought to prove your worth?”

Han made a face. Sighing, she ushered them in. The rectangular villa had a massive courtyard, which they passed through. He saw other women flitting about, eyeing them. The servant made a gesture, and they disappeared within the house. They came to an office space. A curtain had been drawn across the opposite end of the desk. The servant hurried over and spoke to presumably Master Tsabin.

Han really hoped he wasn’t dangerous, or a fraud. The servant turned. “Your name.”

“Han Solo,” he said, “And my friend, Baze Malbus.”

Whisper, whisper. “Unusual names. Where are you from?”

“The colonies…” She cut him off. “ _Which_ colonies?”

Baze spoke. “Jedha. Before it was razed.”

Whisper, whisper. “A great tragedy. Why do you believe yourself worthy?”

Han was getting annoyed by all this. “Listen, let’s cut the bullshit. You’re gonna turn me away like everyone else no matter what I say. I’m not gonna give you a sob story about how I can’t watch anyone die for me anymore. Who hasn’t? So how about we play a game? Dejarik. I myself favour the Jedi tile.”

Whisper, whisper. Then, a female voice, “Suyan, you may lower the curtain.”

From beneath the heavy cloth sat a woman of similar age. Han’s first thought was that she looked a bit like Leia. Her jaw was squarer, eyes harder, with straight dark hair braided, then pinned back. She wore a black tunic, with light silver armour on her shoulders, a leather-armoured vest, and dark pants. “There aren’t many that still cling to the ancient ways,” Tsabin recited back. “Do you think that makes you worthy, though?”

Han knew this was the final test. A memory from long ago, of keen, relentless Sabine of Mandalore. If he ever met her again, she deserved a second apology. Han inclined his head and tried to sound deferential. “No, Master Tsabin. I think what you do with the future is worth more.”

She observed him keenly.

“Return here tomorrow at daybreak,” she said, turning to look at Baze. “What was done to Jedha was an evil.”

The older man said nothing. Suyan escorted them out. As they walked back towards the camp, Han said, “This better work. I should’ve just asked you to give me some of your blasting jelly.”

Baze laughed. “Simple and effective, but not elegant.”

“Elegance is for bending. Nothing blowing stuff up can’t solve.” They grinned at each other in the way only kindred spirits could. “Think Master Tsabin will agree?”

“I smelt blasting jelly when we were walking through there. Fire Nation, on brand.”

Han held up his hands in surrender. “Surprised they taught you that, being a monk.”

Baze frowned. “No, it was a temple to the Spirits. We were trained to fight, but only to defend its treasures.” His face clouded. “It was later…when the temple was taken. Many died. Nothing made sense anymore.”

Han nodded. “Grew up in Corellia. Can’t say you find faith scrambling to eat. Though, I did help to keep the Moon Spirit alive.”

Baze looked at him sideways. “I heard that was mostly Cassian.”

“ _Funny_.” Han paused. “Is that why you two had a falling out? Mon Cala?”

“We had a falling out,” Baze said quietly, “Because Chirrut felt that Mon Cala proved _me_ right – while I felt that Mon Cala proved _him_ right.” At his baffled expression, Baze continued. “Chirrut thought us meeting you all was destiny. Maybe, maybe not. But the Avatar died that day. The Avatar is the child of Vader. The Earth Kingdom fell. It feels like one sick joke for everything Chirrut believes.”

“But you changed your mind.”

“Cassian brought Luke and Leia back from the dead. We studied ancient texts in the temple. No one has ever done that. _No one._ Death cannot be cheated.”

“So, it was meant to happen? Cassian was meant to do that?”

Baze shook his head as they neared the camp. “You were in the Cave of Two Lovers, weren’t you? Chirrut loves that horrible song,” he said fondly, “But it says something about light.”

Han remembered that glowing kyber cave. “It was something like ‘Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars’.”

“A selfless, unconditional love. Hope,” Baze said as they approached their friends. Baze’s eyes were trained on Chirrut’s face. Han gave the stocky man a hard shove.

“Tell him.” Han watched him go. Chirrut turned his blind eyes up as Baze touched his cheek. Then he laughed, uproariously, at something Baze had said. Alright, that was enough sappiness. He saw Leia smile as he walked over.

Well, maybe a _little_ more sappiness.

  
  
When Han returned the next morning at dawn with Chewie, he found four other women alongside Tsabin and Suyan. She introduced them as her assistants. Rabene, a tan-skinned woman with short black hair, carrying a long spear. Eirtama with tightly-cropped blonde hair and pale skin, carrying a short sword. Dorra, wavy brown hair pinned back, also with a short sword. And Sashah, with long dark hair and a prominent nose, scarred and holding Suyan’s hand and a polearm in the other.

The things he did for his friends, the War, and his conscience.

“You have to think of the sword as another limb, or an extension of your body.” Han gave her a look. Tsabin sighed. “Think of it as an extra-long, very pointy arm.”

So, swordsmanship training was a lot more of him being chased around by absolutely unrelenting women than he’d expected. “Han!” Tsabin would call from where she was watching. He would turn and get hit in the head. “Don’t get distracted.”

Han groaned from the ground. He could hear Chewie snickering to himself.

There were also art lessons. Art lessons! To train his sight, as though Han wasn’t a sailor who could map the stars perfectly. Sashah and Eirtama dragged him up to one of the grassy hills and had him paint the landscape. When Han produced his crude painting, Eirtama stared at it for a moment. “You added a land-squid strangling an acklay.”

“Capturing Vendaxa’s spirit,” Han said nonchalantly, knowing he’d gotten the rest of the details right, if hideous. Eirtama pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed.

But Han found himself improving. As the days passed, he was able to knock aside Rabene and Dorra’s strikes and chase them around instead. He also found that his friends were more and more excited to see him whenever he came back. That did things to a man’s self-esteem.

Leia was especially enthusiastic.

Most importantly, Tsabin seemed more trusting. “Sure, you can bring your 'uncle' over to see your new sword."

Han smirked. Perfect. Luke and Leia were going to get a big surprise.

Tsabin sighed, watching as Han worked. "The world has changed, with the Avatar dead at Lord Vader’s hand,” she said unexpectedly to him, as she showed him how they were going to forge his sword. “Now, more than ever, people are fighting for their lives.”

“And they weren’t before?”

“Hope is a scary thing.”

In the dark days at Jabba’s Palace, Han had nobody but his own thoughts to endure. Whispers. _No one is coming. Luke and Leia are dead._ “Then you got to make your own,” he said, to this tired, sad-looking woman. “There’s riots in the Outer Islands.”

She shook her head. “I’ve met Vader, kid. Those people are doomed.”  
  


The forging of the sword was gruelling. He laboured under the women’s careful instructions. When he was done, he held the gleaming blade out for Tsabin’s inspection. Chewie roared in approval at the stylized bear and falcon. He also added some Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation symbols common in Corellia. But it was the pair of wings, just like the necklace Leia always wore, that made Tsabin’s face harden. “Spy!”

Before Han could speak, she pulled her own blade. Tsabin fought monstrously well. Where her small frame disadvantaged, she used speed and wits to keep the fight balanced. Han fought back wildly, leaning on his larger size and natural strength. They broke out of the forge. Chewie howled, but Han shook his head. They weren’t here to maul Tsabin and friends.

He jumped onto one of the courtyard benches, slicing a tree branch down.

Tsabin cut through it like butter. Han leapt down as she backed him against a wall. He ducked under her sweep. Tsabin’s sword left cuts straight through the stone. Han took off in a run. He leapt over the turtle duck pond, sending the birds scattering across the courtyard. Tsabin was forced to halt and duck.

Their spar continued. Han swept up dirt from the courtyard, straight into her eyes. He had been in his own scrapes. Elegance was for benders. “You know kid, I’m really starting to like you,” she said, squinting through the dust. Han moved carefully around her, considering his options. His feet made the softest crunch of gravel.

Tsabin struck. She knocked aside his sword and kicked him straight in the gut. As Han faced down the end of her sword, he heard yelling from the atrium. “Tsabin, you have to see this, it’s not possible -”

Luke and Leia stepped into the courtyard, just as he’d asked them to. Now if they’d only gotten here _before_ Tsabin tried to separate his head from shoulders. The woman’s face paled. “No. _No_. Who are you? I am a loyal Fire Nation -”

Leia pulled from her dress a silver necklace of two wings. “Sabé?” she breathed.  
  


Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewie sat in the office. Sabé, or Tsabin to those closest to her, watched them carefully. Sabé had introduced her friends: Rabé, Eirtaé, Dormé, Saché, and Yané. All had changed their names out of love and loyalty to the once-Queen of Naboo. Sabé clasped Leia’s cheeks gently, tears in her eyes. “I thought I had failed Padmé,” she whispered, “That you were dead.”

“The Rebellion has powerful friends.”

“And you must be Luke,” she said to him, “I was your mother’s lover.”

The statement knocked the wind right out of him. Sabé held up her hands quickly. “After! We became lovers after you were born and your father… Well, you know, don’t you?”

Luke nodded. There was nothing else to be said to that.

“In a way, you’re our Aunt,” Leia said.

Sabé laughed, but her eyes were sad. “I would have loved to have been your aunt, in a better world. I should never have left.”

“Why did you?”

“Your mother was very ill towards the end,” Sabé said, pressing her fingertips for a moment to her eyes. “We were staying in one of the river villages on Naboo. I left to try and find a healer. When I returned, Padmé was gone. She left a note. She had taken a bad turn and knew there would be no way out of it, so she needed to find people quickly who could take care of you, Leia.”

She looked over at Luke. “And I wish that you had known her, Luke. She would have been proud of you both.”

He wanted to bring up Vader, Anakin. He wanted to _know_. Had they been lovers? Had he always been a monster, and Ben’s tales were all convenient lies? Instead, he said, “I wish it had all gone differently. That they had never…”

“So do all of us who have lived through this War,” Sabé said, “But your mother loved you more than life itself. No matter what you think that happened, on whether you deserve to have been born or not, know that Padmé _loved_ you both. And if it matters, I love you. We came to the Fire Nation to kill Vader, before you ever had to.”

“Why?” Luke whispered.

“Because I wanted you to grow up in a world where you never needed to know pain,” Sabé told him. “Your mother wanted that as well. That's what all parents want for their children.”

“Selfless, unconditional love,” Han said. They both looked at him in surprise. “Baze said that. That was why Cassian could heal you.”

A warm wave swept over Luke. He wanted to hold that feeling tight within this chest. All these people who loved him, who had loved him. Love him. But it was so hard. He could not think of Aunt Beru kissing his forehead, the whispered conversations in the dark they thought he didn’t hear (“He’s _my_ boy, Owen, my boy”), the way Uncle Owen had always tried to listen, even when he didn’t understand (“Luke, I am so proud of you”).

Not until Ben looked him in the eye and said, “It is true.”

And Luke knew that day was not to come. So, he held what Han said, and tried not to let it burn him as the scar on his hand did.

“Why did you stop?” Leia asked.

Sabé looked at her hands. “Well, Vader is much, much more than any of us could handle. So, we started attacking military outposts, working with defectors. But then the news came. And I just…” She shook her head. “But the Avatar is back, now, aren’t they?”

The twins looked at each other uneasily. Quickly, Han started talking about Mon Mothma. Sabé was immediately interested. “I remember Chuchi. She and Padmé were friends in all their little royal circles. Yes, I will be there. We’ve skulked in this house for too long.”

After, she and the handmaidens wished them goodbye. She presented Han with a beautiful sheath for the sword. “Keep at it, Han,” she said, “You have the makings of a great leader.” She also produced a small square of fish. “Keep an eye on him though, Chewbacca.”

The bear gave a huff of agreement. Luke tried to smile as they walked away from the villa. “Great leader, huh?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t see you volunteering!”

“If anything,” Leia said, “Cassian is the one holding you lot together. Give that poor man a break, why don’t you?”

“Easy there, Princess.”

Some things at least, Luke reflected, were simple. To love these people was one.  
  


As the Falcon sailed, Luke waited until he was certain the group had fallen asleep. The temperature dropped in the summer nights, so they all slept huddled together. He watched Enfys sleeping across from him, pressed up against Artoo’s fuzzy warmth. A desert child, like him. She’d probably have hated the North and South Pole. He grinned for a moment to himself, imagining the two of them hiding out in Leia’s parents’ home from the cold, when they came to visit.

There he was again. Imagining what would happen when the War ended. And the War would only end with one action.

Luke got up. Careful not to rouse anyone, he reached Cassian’s sleeping form. Luke touched Cassian’s shoulder. His eyes opened immediately. Luke made a gesture to say, follow.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Cassian trailed after him to the deck of the Falcon. Chewie was watching over the engine. He gave an inquisitive whine when he saw them, but let them keep their secrets. “I never said thank you.”

Cassian was bewildered. “What for?”

“For bringing me back,” Luke said. He leant against the side, watching the shallow seas. Beneath the Fire Nation waters, Leia told him, were forests of knobbly stone beneath the sea, teaming with fish. Coral, she said it was called. This place where horror had come from, bursting to the brim with life.

“You would never need to thank me for that.”

And Luke knew that. Spirits, he had taken Cassian for granted. He pulled Cassian into a rough hug. To his surprise, he felt Cassian return it more easily than he ever had before. “I do. I ran. Living, living’s not easy, is it?”

“No,” Cassian said softly, “It’s not. And you have to carry that weight.”

Even before being the Avatar, Luke had thought himself good at saving people.

He’d been raised around people trying to end the slave trade in the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation.

And then he’d saved all those villages in their journey, had saved the North Pole. Had saved his friends, over and over.

But now…

His burnt, scarred hand kept awake at night sometimes with pain. He could never hold a stylus, a utensil, anything, with it again. It slowed his bending – enough to make a difference, enough to be a danger, if his and Leia’s teachers weren’t talented enough to teach them something new. Every little action reminded him of what his own father had done to him, to his daughter.

The anger, hot and ugly, _why did you do it? **How** could you do it?_

He saw Cassian watching where his eyes were. “Some people won’t change,” he said bluntly. “Don’t mistake pity for forgiveness.”

 _You changed, you forgave Jyn,_ Luke wanted to say, but that was cruel. And there had been enough cruelty. “What would you do,” he said slowly, “If I told you I couldn’t do it?”

Cassian was silent. Then, “I would kill Vader myself.”

Luke exhaled softly. Selfless, unconditional love. “And what would you do if I hated you for it?”

Cassian was a good actor. But Luke knew him as well as he knew Leia. He saw pain lance across Cassian Andor’s face momentarily. “Then I would live with it.”

“I could never ask you to do that,” Luke whispered. “I want… I want you to be happy, Cassian. I really do.”

“Sometimes doing the right thing requires sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice,” Luke repeated. He shivered. He ran his fingers across the burnt, scaled skin. My father – _you are his child too_ – the krayt dragon Vader devouring him –  
  


Iden brought over one of her friends a few nights later. “You’ll get along swimmingly,” Iden said, a dark look passing over her face, “She’s also holding a torch for a Rebel.”

“Iden, don’t say those things so loudly,” her friend admonished. Ciena Ree, Iden had said. Another mixed-Nation child. Ciena was brown-skinned, with curly hair in two puffs. She looked even more exhausted than Iden did, but her uniform and boots gleamed. Iden had said Ciena was from Jelucan, one of the Fire Nation islands near the Southern Isles. It was heavily populated by inter-nation peoples as a result. “And he’s not a Rebel, he’s just…misguided.”

“He _left_ , Ciena, when we were _sixteen_ , and he’s not coming back.” Jyn sensed they’d had this argument many times. “It’s been years now, he’s not who he was then.”

None of us are, Jyn thought. She would spend the rest of her life carrying who she had been at sixteen.

“Once the Fire Nation wins the War and he sees how we’re sharing our progress with the world, he’ll understand,” Ciena said. She said it like a mantra.

Something snapped in her. “Progress?” she spat, “Only the elite have rights in this country. Women have nothing here. We’re destroying our rivers and burning our forests. And that’s nothing to say of what we’re doing to the other Nations!”

“You’ve seen a lot of the world, haven’t you?” Iden said easily, downing a goblet of wine. Had she planned this? Jyn shrugged. “Ciena was at the Siege of the North.”

Jyn looked at her in surprise. “There were a few survivors of…whatever that was. I was on one of the ships furthest away. I fell into the water. Maybe the Spirits meant for me to survive. To see him again.”

“Oh, spare me,” Iden muttered.

“You’re just a downer because you’ve never been in love,” Ciena said, poking Iden in the side.

Iden snorted, looking away, red-faced. “I know enough about love to know it isn’t supposed to end with either person court-martialling the other.”

Jyn wanted to vomit. “Spirits? Do you know what that was? That was the Ocean Spirit, Ciena. It wanted revenge for what Tarkin did.”

“Admiral Tarkin was -”

“Tarkin tried to kill the Moon Spirit,” Jyn snapped. “ _I_ was there. Did you see the Northern City? Do you understand what Tarkin was trying to destroy?”

Ciena twitched. “It was…it was necessary…” Her words sounded feeble. Scowling, she whirled on Jyn. “Here you are spouting all this… _rebel_ talk. And yet you’re here. Explain that! At least I’m standing for something! At least I have honour to a cause!”

Jyn’s mind was hazy, but the words felt like a slap. “You’re right,” she whispered, “I have no cause. I'm just a selfish asshole, Ciena, just like you.”

Ciena seemed to crumple, at that. “I'm not. I'm not. I just wanted to captain a ship. Or fly one of those war balloons, now. But, it's...it's more than that...”

Iden touched Ciena’s hand. The other girl squeezed it back. In the candlelight, Iden’s eyes were soft. Jyn knew eyes like that. “They were _never_ going to let you be that,” Iden said.

Jyn remembered when Tarkin had stepped into her ship, had brought her world crashing down. _You will never see your father again._ So, they sat there, and drank, the coward, and the traitor, and the monster her father made of her.  
  


Bodhi paced the cell, trying to think. Their cell was underground. No windows. Iron bars straight down the front, stone walls all the way around. When he asked, Kyle shook his head. “Melt stone? That’s insane.”

“I saw someone who could,” Bodhi said. His fingers traced the burn hidden by his prison clothes. “He tried to kill me.”

“Who was it?”

“Vader.”

Kyle raised his eyebrows. “You’re one lucky guy. Spirits must’ve been feeling extra generous that day.”

“Thanks, I guess.” He sighed, sitting down and thinking some more. A rat scurried across the floor. Bodhi followed it with his eyes. The guards came on regularly scheduled rotations. The other cells on the floor were empty. It was just him and Kyle, whose cells faced each other. They’d have an eight-minute window on the Day of Black Sun with no firebending.

“I can bend lightning,” Kyle continued. Bodhi wondered if he was fishing for a compliment and internally sighed. He’d only ever seen loathsome people bend lightning.

“Would that be helpful?”

“If it was, I would’ve gotten out of here a long time ago.” Kyle tapped the bars. “These just conduct it. I could shatter the stone, but I tried behind me and there’s a shit-ton of earth compacted around my side.”

Bodhi groaned, covering his face with his hands. Kyle continued, “Did you hear what the guards were saying? There’s been rioting on the Outer Islands.”

“Riots?”

Kyle nodded. “The lower classes aren’t satisfied. They’re hungry. They’re tired of scraping along for an endless War. And even with the Avatar dead, there’s no way the Fire Nation can control the Earth Kingdom. I'd say things aren't going to be so easy for old Palpatine.”

“Yeah, we’re the stubborn type,” Bodhi muttered, though his heart lightened. There was hope, even in this dank prison cell, crawling with rats. He noticed Kyle’s cell had none. Lucky.

“It’s like a house of cards,” Kyle said, lying down on the floor of the cell, “Getting out’s the same. We just need to find where the loose one is.”

Bodhi leaned against the wall, closing his eyes. These days, he dreamt awake and he dreamt asleep. He dreamt of rats, crawling up and up and up a house of cards, all with Jyn’s green eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ciena is a pretty minor character, only appearing in the new canon book "Lost Stars". She and Iden have such boring white love interests (I know Lost Stars is probably the highest rated new canon book but the Ciena/whatever his name was romance was unbearable!) and my brain went...oh...what if...that's kinda interesting... (and I'm sucker for Mailee for those of you who know ATLA)


	34. Book Three: Rebirth V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we come to a chapter that has been my bane: (some) of Obi Wan's story of Anakin. I...ended up writing out story out-lines for the three books of the Prequel Trilogy for this verse (one for AOTC, one for the clone wars, one for ROTS) to help me. I have mainly drawn from Clone Wars (2003) and the old Republic comics/books, with some of TCW. (this is me unsubtly saying I put TOO MUCH effort into this). Some notes:
> 
> 1) I abhor the Barriss arc in TCW (I read the old Medstar books religiously) so Barriss is good where she is mentioned.
> 
> 2) Obviously no clone chip, so I've reverted back to the old canon: they were just unquestioning obedient to Palps and some made the moral decision to disobey (excuse me crying over Bly/Aayla from Battlefront II). Tiny mention of Fox/Riyo here because the fanart is cute; pretend he went "sorry, can't hear you over my wife's righteous idealism" at Order 66. Not sure how the Fives arc would play out...I do love Fives so in my heart he lives idk you tell me
> 
> 3) The asterisked advice Mace gives Anakin, and the title "Gravedigger" is from The Rise of Kyoshi novel by F.C. Yee.
> 
> 4) I've based Naboo off the Ottomans/Ottoman Spain (which would allow for its ethnic diversity). 
> 
> You can listen to the Sephardic Jewish lullaby Padmé sings [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VclC-bgt80) or [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ambNQ1K3Z_8). (I know Natalie Portman is Ashkenazi, but I truly loved the song; translation is probably not 100% accurate).

Jyn was miserable. She stood in some country noble’s villa, Krennic’s shadow. He seemed to get a sick glee out of her humiliation. Her dark hair gleamed, loosely covered by a richly embroidered veil. Her blood red dress skimmed the floor. Some woman Krennic had found, had painted her face. Jyn wanted to scrape her skin off with her nails. It covered at least the horrible bags under her eyes.

She downed another goblet of wine, stifling a yawn.

A soft hand touched her elbow. Jyn reflexively jerked back. An older woman, in a simple white dress, was beside her. She looked like a servant. “My Lady, the master of the house wishes to greet you?” she said, keeping her eyes downcast. Krennic barely nodded, too engrossed in his conversation.

Her coppery hair was cut short, Jyn noticed. The woman linked arms with her and walked them towards the balcony, tucked away from anyone’s sight. They stood over-looking an elaborate garden full of statues. No one else was around. Jyn turned and faced her directly. “Who are you?”

The corner of the woman’s mouth turned up. “My name is Mon Mothma,” she said, “And I think we have mutual friends.”

Ah. A dozen scenarios ran through her mind. Cautiously, she said, “I wouldn’t say we’re on the best terms anymore.”

“That’s a shame,” Mon told her, “I think you could be an excellent friend to me, and others who share our feelings.”

Jyn was not sober enough for this. She tried to draw Krennic’s protection around her like a cloak, but it was a falsehood. _You are right back where you started, a tool, a useful fool._ “Get away,” she hissed, “You really think you can take the Throne and become Fire Lord, riots or no? You’re a fool to come here.”

“And you’re happy with your country? These people are rioting because they think things can be better,” Mon said placidly. Her gaze grew colder. “And my dear – who said anything about us being here for _you_?”

Jyn glanced around discreetly. The villa was bursting with people. She saw the ultra-pale Pantoran, Riyo Chuchi, arm interlinked with her husband – a Mandalorian man. What was name? Sox? No, Fox, that was it. He looked more than a little uncomfortable, wearing red-burnished armour over the grass-woven sarong and cape of his people. He was speaking to some military men – Celchu, Klivian, Janson. The Papanoida family intermingled with guests. But it was the servants Jyn focused on. Some… She frowned, watching one with a long curtain of brilliant green and purple hair. The woman lifted her head, her blue eyes pale and unblinking.

“And you think the people will listen to you, a woman?”

Mon Mothma shrugged. “This Nation is sick, Jyn,” she said at last. “It has been sick for many generations, but it has grown worse. You could be a part of this. Why not a woman leader who values peace? Sól, let’s give women rights. Rights for those of inter-nation birth, and for the poor. Education, infrastructure, the end of poverty, the end of exploitation. A radical change that this Nation needs – if we’ll even be a Nation, by that point. Some of the Islands might want to become autonomous. Once we’re done with war reparations and trials, of course.”

“You’re serious,” Jyn said at last, really looking at this woman. She felt her face burn, and could not understand why.

“I don’t think we can get it all done in my lifetime,” Mon admitted. “But a society grows great, when old women plant trees, whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

“I think you’ve got that proverb a little wrong,” Jyn said. It was a weak statement. Mon only smiled.

Rebellions, someone had once told her, are built on hope.

“We could be friends, Jyn,” she said gently. She touched Jyn’s elbow. Jyn did not flinch. “I think you can be more than just a shadow.”

There was a cry of pain. A very tall man, with his dark hair in a long queue down his back had collapsed onto the floor, blood at his lips. Jyn stared. He was the Black Sun leader, Xizor or something. Everyone knew the Fire Nation was bankrupt, relying on criminal organizations for their supply lines, especially with the destruction of half the fleet at the North Pole. Jyn looked around, but the mysterious servants had vanished.

Mon Mothma turned, then glanced back, sad. “I abhor violence. Jyn?” She stared at Mon, half admiring. “I won’t forget what we did to you. For the Rebellion. For this country.”

Jyn watched her melt into the crowd as the crowd began to panic. She felt Krennic seize her arm. “Did you see? Speak, girl!”

“No,” Jyn found herself saying. “I saw nothing.”

Shit, she thought. _Shit_.  
  


The twins dream. Fire. From it emerges a dead man. Obi Wan Kenobi. His face flickers, alternately young and old. Always, endlessly sad.

“It is time I explain myself,” he says, “You have lost faith in yourself because of my deception. Go to the island of Mustafar. There, I will explain what happened, what became of Anakin Skywalker. You must make haste.”

The twins jerked into consciousness. Luke scrambled into sitting. He reached out and steadied her – despite everything, Leia couldn’t imagine not sleeping side by side, dreaming the same dreams. His right hand grasped her shoulder, or tried too; his grip was slack, hand unable to grab properly.

How can he see goodness in Vader? How can he forget what Vader has done, to them, to friends, to everyone?

Yet as he looked her in the eye, she couldn’t deny him this. “We’ll tell Han to get the Falcon ready,” she said.

Luke had not forgotten what Vader had done.

The skin on his right hand stung beneath the soft leather of his gloves. Here, on Mustafar, in the shadow of Vader’s Castle, as the people at the nearest island explained, the sensation was worse. The skin felt uncomfortably tight, making it difficult to move. Sensation was deadened inside it.

But he needed to know. The horrific black castle cast a long shadow across. Inside it, the Sun. If he touched this shadow, would he find the answers he was seeking?

Mustafar was one of the Fire Nation’s islands, formed by a still-active volcano. Old lava flow had cooled to hardened black trails. The group could hear rumbling as they walked across the rippled black cliffs. Pools of water hissed with hot steam. Lava streamed across the landscape and into the ocean. Luke had stepped closer, feeling his eyes immediately dry from the heat. The earth was building itself on Mustafar.

Chirrut wriggled his toes. “There is something buried under here…people, all covered in ash,” he said. They treaded more carefully after that, avoiding the ominous structures and organic forms that rose like hideous sculptures.

Finding a flat, secluded area, the twins sat cross-legged, facing each other. Chirrut and Enfys, as the most spiritually aware, settled by their feet, also facing each other, forming a diamond. Baze, Cassian, and Han fanned out in a loose perimeter.

Chirrut cleared his throat. “Now, do you know how to enter the Spirit World? I think that’s where your friend Obi Wan wants to bring you.”

“We did, once,” Luke said, “At the Spirit Oasis of the North Pole.”

“So, a deeply spiritual place. We’re not lucky – today is an ordinary day as well, not a solstice or equinox or anything,” Enfys said, chewing on her lip, “Okay. Well, you are the Avatar. Can you enter the Avatar State at will? Cassian said…”

Luke noticed Cassian twitch at that question. “Well…”

“We could, but now we can’t,” Leia said bluntly, folding her arms, “Which isn’t surprising. We can’t exactly open our chakras if we didn’t know what we were meant to be accepting about ourselves. So now, it’s…all messed up.”

Chirrut winced. “Then we will do our best to guide you into the Spirit World.”

Luke concentrated. He could feel it beckoning, felt his senses spread out across the island, briefly touching the castle. He could feel Enfys and Chirrut, warm and bright and singing, his friends, but from Leia…

Nothing. She was sealed shut from him, her thoughts and feelings. Someone had to take the first step. Luke clasped Leia’s hands. She startled, opening her eyes. He drew forward until they were level with each other. “I want to do the right thing, Leia.”

She closed her eyes, pressed her lips together. She said nothing for a moment. Of course he’s ruined it, he’s ruined his whole relationship with Leia because of Father –

“I know you do.”

Their eyes began to glow.  
  


They were standing atop a great mesa. Yellowish clouds hung in the air, obscuring the ground. No. There was no ground. Luke was certain of this. The sky was a sickly brown colour, and smelt faintly sweet, like a poisonous fruit. The Spirit World.

From the shifting clouds, emerged someone familiar. “Obi Wan. How are you here?”

Luke wanted to step forward, but he hung back, cautious. The old monk smiled, creasing the wrinkles around his eyes, his lips. “A long, long time ago, the man who trained me was brutally murdered. After I killed his murderer, I was…lost. I journeyed through the Spirit World, searching for him.

“Of course,” he said, quieting, “It was a fool’s errand. I learnt many things. And I found even, the man who murdered my master. That is the greatest trap of tyrants – they fear their own mortality, what karma awaits, and he would not pass on. He was a pitiful creature, then. Reprehensible, but pitiful. We must all pass through the Wheel of Reincarnation, that grey curtain of falling water… and the world will turn to silver and gold…”

Obi Wan’s eyes grew distant, less mortal. “And then… only the Spirits know. But it is possible, to stay, for a little while. Especially if one’s journey is not yet over.”

Luke kept his voice calm, though he could feel the tension in his body. “Why didn’t you tell us – tell _me_ , then? You told me Vader betrayed and murdered our father.”

“And that was true, from a certain point of view. The good man your father was, is no more, subsumed into the monster he has become.”

“A certain point of view?” Leia demanded. Obi Wan settled down on a boulder, hanging his head. She stepped towards him, then seemed to think better of it, drawing back and glaring.

“Yes. You’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. And that is all I can tell you. My point of view, of what occurred. But where to begin?” he mused, rubbing a hand down his face – how could a dead person be exhausted? – “A dying man once said to me, ‘it will end where it began. In a desert land, under twin suns.’”

“But Tatooine has only one sun…” Luke trailed off, “Our father. The prophecy.”

“I would not put so much stock in prophecy,” Obi Wan said, “I am telling you this story, because you must accept what you are. Just as I have, now that death has stripped all other worries away.”

“What do you mean?”

Obi Wan made a gesture, as though to firebend. Nothing leapt from his hand. There was no bending in the Spirit World. Obi Wan seemed to stretch out, grasping blindly. And still, no fire. “To think, all my life I was so frightened of it, a fear I taught Anakin, and now that it is gone… Now, listen…”  
  


It begins in a long summer that seemed without end. The sky is so blue it almost hurts to look at.

(Or perhaps it began before this. Perhaps it began when a child was taken – stolen -from his mother, when the elders whispered, _“he is a true prodigy.”_

Perhaps it began, when, in a moment of frustration, after Anakin had set the training ground ablaze, Obi Wan had cried, _“what is **wrong** with that child?”_

Maybe it doesn’t matter how it began. What is the point of knowing how the story ends, and telling it again?)

There is a charged, damp stickiness in the air. A summer storm is coming. Typhoons hit the Fire Nation every summer, bringing wind, rain, and lightning. All that can be done is to ride them out. To hope your village is not flattened. Even Anakin, spiritually lacking as he was, seems moved by it. In the weeks before the Separatist Wars break out, Obi Wan catches him walking through the temple gardens, pausing, staring at nothing. Listening.

Waiting.

Fire Lord Palpatine seems sharper that summer. While Obi Wan has never approved of their friendship, he lets Anakin wander through the Palace grounds with the elderly man. The servants no longer smile and chatter when he comes to retrieve Anakin for training, sweat glistening on their foreheads. Some he never sees again. He finds Palpatine and Anakin in the Fire Lord’s office, Palpatine carelessly sweeping aside letters in foreign writing.

Once, he sees Queen Padmé turn her face up towards the sky, stopping the retinue in its track. Searching, for answers.

At last, the clouds burst.

An assassination attempt, their flight from Coruscant into the depths of the Earth Kingdom, the anguish of the common man, the mysterious qi-blockers from Mandalore, the outbreak of civil war –

It is storming when they return to Coruscant. Weeks on the run keeping the Queen safe, and at last, they are back. The rain slaps the streets, pooling in potholes as they stumble along to the healing houses. Obi Wan half-drags, half-carries, a delirious Anakin, until they can administer healing poultices and droughts. “Just hang on, just hang on,” he says desperately.

“Leave me,” Anakin slurs. The healers cluck over Anakin’s mangled, burnt hand. “He’ll still be able to bend,” one says eventually, “But he can’t move it properly, anymore.”

There’s a clatter from outside. Shouts. Queen Padmé stumbles into the healing house. She’s still dressed in her dust-covered white clothes. The beautiful little cap with trailing lace is askew over her thick, dark curls. Her large, dark eyes look enormous in her small face. Anakin sits up quickly from the mattress. Her hand moves to her mouth, an uncontrolled gesture.

Then the mask closes, the Queen draws herself in. Despite the dirt on her white vest and billowing trousers, men’s clothes, she has become the Queen. She submits to their perfunctory bows. “I apologize for my intrusion. I… I wanted to check. We were all separated, on the journey back.”

“I’m alright. I didn’t mean to – I would never have left you behind,” Anakin says, all in a rush. Neither of them is looking at each other. Both their eyes are on the pouring rain, sluicing off the roof to hit the stones. He had suspected, but now…

 _Oh_ , Obi Wan thinks to himself, **_oh._**

The three of them stand there in silence. Anakin lifts his burnt hand, holding it up against the raindrops. For a moment, his blue eyes flicker over to Padmé. “The stars are fire,” he murmurs, “So even the stars burn out.”

It’s an oddly quixotic statement from Anakin, and it troubles him.  
  


They spar in the courtyard of the Temple on Coruscant. Anakin’s fire is a bright gold, smashing through his own luminous blue flame. Anakin powers himself across the tile. Obi Wan has never seen anyone produce such a consistent jet of flame for prolonged time. He runs across the perimeter of the courtyard, trying to cut off Anakin’s pursuit.

His apprentice surges upwards, bringing a line of flame down with his heel. Obi Wan snaps forward with a burst of blue flame. Break his root. The fundamental principal to win a Fire Duel.

The flames crash together. Some of it singes the ends of Obi Wan’s hair. “Careful! Remember what happened the last time!”

“I know, I know.” Anakin irritably imitates the old croak of Master Yoda. “Plant the oleanders, here we do. Fun gardening together, we have, Skywalker?”

“Yes, burning the Temple gardens does cast suspicion on us just being a bunch of tea and Dejarik-loving monks,” Obi Wan says with a smirk.

Anakin gives a small smile as they relax their stances, walking over to the turtle duck pond. Anakin always seems to have sunflower seeds on him. He scoops some from his tunic, tossing them to the turtle ducks. He flings them, accidentally hitting one of the babies. It quacks angrily, swimming away. Anakin’s mouth twists. “You seem tense,” he observes.

“I need to learn lightning,” Anakin says after a pause, “Even if I have to practise every night – I have to be _better_.”

Obi Wan stares at him. “What are you talking about? You’re already…”

“I _have_ to be better,” Anakin snaps. “I have to be.”

But for what, Anakin refuses to say. He is already the most powerful firebender in the nation, perhaps the most powerful firebender that has ever lived. Even with his right hand, gloved, horrifically burnt, his power is immense.

 _Will I be as strong as the Avatar?_ The little blond boy had asked him.

_Anakin, you must work hard. Dedicate yourself more thoroughly –_

“Again,” Anakin says, and blasts white-hot flame.  
  


Obi Wan waits as he watches Anakin walk beside the kindly old man. His face is fatherly, and he pats Anakin warmly on the back. Anakin’s face lights up. He looks hungrily up at the man, desperate for that same, easy affection.

The Separatist Wars rage on. They are shipping out tomorrow, hunting down Dooku.

At last, Anakin finishes his conversation with the old man. The Fire Lord nods his head towards Obi Wan, who returns it with a waist-level bow. The Fire Lord has begun wearing heavier robes of burgundy and coal. He and his retinue sweep away into the deep, cool dark passageways of the palace. Slowly, he and Anakin tread through the black marble and basalt of the Fire Nation Royal Palace. “And what does our beloved Fire Lord have to say today?”

Anakin makes a face. “The usual Earth Kingdom nonsense. Suddenly everyone is a true believer after seeing the power of the Avatar, as though they aren’t waging War to get a bigger piece of land for their States.”

Obi Wan studies the lines of Anakin’s face. His dirty blond hair has grown longer. On his face is the pale-reddish brown of a burn scar, splitting from his right eyebrow down to his cheekbone, the imprint of a burning fingertip. Anakin has never spoken of what caused it. It mars his handsome looks, makes them leaner, harsher. The lines beneath his eyes are purple-black.

“Have you been getting sleep? Are you having dreams again?”

Unconsciously, Anakin’s burnt hand reaches towards the scar across his eye. “Sometimes.” He changes tack as they walk through the hallway of the portraits of past Fire Lords, painted in cinnabar and carmine and gold leaf. The faces stare down towards them. “The Jedi are dedicated to truth and beauty, as peace-keepers. We learnt from the Air Nomad teachings of non-attachment.”

Anakin has always eagerly devoured knowledge, always looking, Obi Wan thinks uncomfortably, for his approval. He tries to thread the needle. “Yes, that’s true.”

“Well, all this has been proving that you need to defend truth and beauty with ugliness. I read a scroll,” Anakin says, “One I…found…that some Gurus claim: ‘a gardener who nurtures a flower so others enjoy its bloom, must spend time with their hands in the dirt’.”

The pale, pointed faces of the dead Fire Lords look down on them as they exit. Where did Anakin encounter such material?

In the bright hot sunlight stands the retinue of Queen Padmé. The Queen herself is resplendent, in a tall conical white headdress, the cloth spilling down her back and threaded with green jewels that are incandescent in the light, so white it is almost blinding. She is speaking to some handsome-looking men, minor nobles perhaps. Anakin glowers. His hands clench, his pupils dilate. The heat around them swells, threatening to boil over.

The Queen dismisses them, turning to look up the steps. Her light brown eyes grow soft. Despite the public nature of the Royal Promenade, Obi Wan suddenly feels very much an intruder in that moment. It is the way they look at each other, he thinks, like drowning men sighting shore. Instantly, the anger slides away from Anakin, a boyish nature overtaking his scarred face. He watches Anakin straighten subtly, shoulders seeming to broaden, as they bow to the Queen. She accepts them neutrally, inclining her head, before sweeping up the Palace steps. The long, richly embroidered, sleeves of her dress flutter, seeming to graze Anakin for a split second.

Tomorrow, they head for Ohma-D’un, the swamplands of Naboo. He’s met the _qi_ -blockers working with the Fire Nation militia – they are so young, barely teenagers, already desperately loyal and unquestioning obedient. The Queen has insisted on coming along, fierce believer in diplomacy as she is.

“Oh, yes,” Obi Wan murmurs under his breath, “A very beautiful flower.”

Louder, he says, “Anakin, the Council will let you read the scrolls in the archives in time. You are wise, and powerful, you just have to give it time. There are scrolls of similar… provocative nature in there. The Council wants you to be ready to see them with an unbiased mind.”

He sees Anakin bite back an angry retort. “You once said you wouldn’t stop me, if I wanted to leave. If I wanted to go back for my mother, or the other slaves,” he says softly. “Maybe what we need is _action_ – not all this running around and pretending to be monks and sages.”

“I still wouldn’t,” Obi Wan tells him, “But we will always disagree on what the best thing to do is. And we _are_ monks, Anakin. Our duty is first and foremost to the spiritual health and peace of the lands.”

Even if the person he most often encounters in the Spirit World is a dead monster with a tattooed face, taunting him.

“I know.” Anakin sighs, as though counting backwards inside his head. In an easier tone, though still strained, Anakin says, “Wise? I don’t recall that sentiment yesterday.”

Obi Wan allows himself to smile. “We must keep up appearances with the military brass, Anakin. We’re one of them. Who’s heard of a Jedi?”

For the moment, all previous talk is forgotten. But the air above Coruscant feels charged. There is an ugly, propane-yellow to the clouds. Anakin might not have noticed, but the Queen was sweating beneath her finery. A heat spell that foretells a summer typhoon.  
  


To watch the Avatar and Anakin duel is to see poetry in motion. Though Mace had struggled to master firebending, as a Water Avatar, he has taken to the aggressive bending style well. His sleeves snap with every perfect Fire-Fist. His power is deadly but controlled, dancing right along the burning blade of madness and serenity. Anakin is pure, raw power, leaving the air charged and crackling in his wake. The Naboo island they have come to for Anakin’s training trembles with every titanic crash. Every so often, Mace has to bend air to keep the plants from catching ablaze. It’s a losing battle.

Then Anakin’s foot slips on an exposed tree root.

He ducks Mace’s blast, falling onto his back. “We have a winner!” Obi Wan calls.

Anakin scowls, breathing in and out heavily through his nose. “The tree root did all the work!”

Mace extends a hand. After a moment, Anakin takes it, allowing the Avatar to pull him to his feet. “You’re more powerful and talented than my old firebending master,” Mace says. Though his face doesn’t shift, the praise is genuine. “But your chakras are not all open, or all closed. That makes it easy for you to be swayed by a strong emotion. That is dangerous, and especially dangerous for a firebender. You must not draw from that well-spring to bring you power.”

Reluctantly, Anakin nods, his eyes averted. He’s calmed. Obi Wan feels a small wave of pride. Being Knighted, has tamed something of Anakin’s temper. “Have you ever heard of Guru Shoken?”

Anakin looks baffled. “He was a philosopher. A proverb of his: _*if you meet the Spirit of Enlightenment on the road, slay it!*_ ”

“That doesn’t seem to correspond to our beliefs,” Anakin says slowly.

“It depends on how you interpret it. I believe it is the essence of being the Avatar. What he means is: *You cannot be bound by petty concerns on your personal journey. You must walk with a singular purpose.*”

Anakin only nods. His fire is stronger, wilder than it has been before. Obi Wan wonders at this, of where he has learnt it.  
  


The mission to negotiate with one of the leaders of the Fifth Nation Separatists is a disaster.

“I know you don’t like it,” Padmé says, keeping her mask on, “But Anakin, you must understand that though many of these people are driven by greed, for many at the bottom – they are doing this out of hunger, out of fear, out of a wish to have a true homeland. Not everywhere in the Earth Kingdom is autonomous like Naboo.”

Anakin says nothing. Padmé’s face wavers, she looks away.

It’s politics. There’s a large crowd of nobles, military-men. They and a handful of other Jedi are here in their official capacity as the sages, mystics, and monks of the Four Nations. How odd, to see faces he barely knows – the Jedi are a secret after all, numbering so few and known only to some select leaders. Politics, though. Obi Wan frowns that as they walk across the iceberg towards the table.

“There isn’t going to be a solution to the Fifth Nation with fireworks and tornados,” Obi Wan says sharply, “We need to minimize the suffering they can inflict.”

“While Coruscant keeps forking over money the other nations won’t give,” Anakin mutters. “Because the Earth King has no real power and the continent is held together by pure spite.”

Obi Wan starts. Where did he learn that? The Fire Lord, he thinks. Palpatine gives Anakin information. Palpatine is generous with his time. Every time they return to Coruscant, the Fire Lord sweeps Anakin into another of their little meetings.

(It’s an old story. The brave knight goes to the sorcerer and asks to save his love. And the sorcerer says _it will be done, but you must give me something._

And the knight thinks _it is only one finger, and one finger it will only be, and then I shall slay the sorcerer and be done with it._

It always starts that way.)

But the thoughts are brushed away as they join the negotiating table. The Fifth Nation commander pales. He raises a shaking hand. “What is the meaning of this?”

Avatar Windu raises a brow. “The delegation of the Alliance of the Four Nations.”

“You can’t fool me! I’ve heard of the Gravedigger,” he snaps, pointing towards Master Mundi.

Obi Wan can hear the sharp inhalation of Anakin. Master Mundi’s face remains polite. “I do not deny that I was called, as a leading Earth Sage, to help. But I regret that the tales of my exploits have grown wilder the further away -”

“Do you still hear them screaming in the Earth? Or are they buried so deep, you pious peace-makers can no longer hear them?” the Fifth Nation commander waves a hand at the others. “And to say nothing of the actions of the impartial Avatar. And the _firebender_! I know the rumours! The armies you lead are nothing but murderers!”

“We come here only for peace,” Avatar Windu says.

“You threaten me, Avatar? You claim the moral high-ground, the blessings of the Spirits, yet what are you? What have you to show for it?”

The battle is over before it begins.

Anakin speaks, as he wipes the blood from his lip. It is rhetorical. “Do you think Master Mundi is really a murderer? That we’re butchers, tools to gain more ground?”

He is silent. The accusation hangs in the crisp winter air. The most powerful firebender in the world is a blunt hammer, a bargaining chip, to remove the imperfections riddling their world.

There is something else in Anakin’s voice. “I wonder what else the Council doesn’t tell us. What the other Jedi have done. What makes us better.”  
  


Jyn stood in the house’s courtyard, facing South. She had been doing this often, lately. In her hands was a single letter, in Bodhi’s handwriting. It had been waiting for her when they returned from the party. Just two words.

Lyra Erso.

For a second, anger rose, feeling already stretched taut as a strip of fabric, about to tear. Jyn breathed in careful repetitions, a basic firebending exercise to control her inner flame. Bodhi, no matter how much he hated her, would never use her mother’s death against her. Then what did it mean? Bodhi had never met Lyra. So then, it was something Lyra had done? Known?

Praying with Cassian, in the temple in Mon Cala…

Frustrated, she strode from the courtyard into the study. Her mother’s papers were still strewn about. With a forceful motion, Jyn began to gather them together. It was the only lead she had. Could it be in her research work? Jyn massaged her temples. She did not have the academic strength to understand half the things her parents had written about.

Pulling open some of the drawers, she began to search for personal correspondence. Squatting down, she ignited a flame in her hand as she went through the bottom drawers, looking at the underside of the desk.

She paused.

Carefully, Jyn scooted backwards. Extending a hand, she pressed against the dark wood. Something moved beneath her hand, and she came away with a slat of wood. There was a crevice inside the desk. There were some religious objects that looked vaguely like the ones you used, but each one was made of kyber.

Sitting atop yellowed sheets of paper, was a Dejarik tile. The Jedi tile. She reached forward and picked it up, turning it over between her fingertips. Dust clung to it. Setting it aside, she lifted the writing it had sat on to the light, and began to read.

It was a letter, by her mother, to a name Jyn did not recognize. She absorbed the letter in snatches – _Jedi Temple – true firebending – beneath the foundations –_

Her fingers grazed over the final lines. _My daughter is a firebender. I am so terribly afraid, and if I must seek witches, then I will. I must protect Jyn from the horrors it has devolved into. Perhaps it has always been that way. Perhaps we were right to fear the rush of feeling and emotion as the Jedi Masters taught._

There was something fortuitous about finding this. Suddenly, Jyn didn’t feel as though she was alone in the house. She wanted, desperately, for Iden and Ciena to be here.

“Who’s there?” she yelled, but no one answered.

She stared at the letter in her hand. _Trust the Spirits._

Jyn stood, walked to her room, and found her pack, her tonfas. On the way out, she grabbed a knife. Then she began to hike towards the top of the great caldera, up the hill towards the ravaged temple high above. Just to make sure.

Just in case.

The slaver of Zygerria sits at the table, sipping her wine. How did they get here? Anakin – and he himself, he will admit, if only to himself – had been unable to ignore the impassioned plea of the little Air Nomad girl, clutching her staff like it was a knife, begging someone to listen to her, believe her that slavers had taken her people from Kiros, in the Southern Air City. Especially not after Jablim. Obi Wan will not forget the butchered bodies of children, _children_ , the rocks thrown as they had fled. He is lucky he escaped with only the tears of the Fire Woman, Dooku’s pale, mysterious assassin. The twist of the cuffs on his wrists still that obsessive train of thought towards Ventress.

Where is Anakin? The bar door creaks open. Obi Wan and Ahsoka sit stiffly, watching the harsh lines of Anakin as he enters the establishment. _Knock her out, then we can interrogate her,_ Obi Wan thinks wildly. _We **need** her, Anakin! Restraint!_

(But why should Anakin care about slaving scum? Why should they?)

Anakin orders from the bartender, sipping it quietly. The Zygerrian slavers chatter amongst themselves. He turns, raising his tankard as though to give them cheers. “It is pleasant to hear the old language again,” he says, sliding over to sit next to the slaver. She flutters her eyelashes. Anakin’s eyes snap briefly to the chains around Obi Wan and Ahsoka. His blue eyes are sharp as flints.

“And whereabouts were you from?”

“See, I don’t know,” Anakin continues, smiling something poisonous. “I’ve never seen it. I didn’t come to the home country until I was old.”

The slavers shift in their chairs. Zygerrians have always spoken of themselves as predators. But they look like prey animals, here. Pale and limp and pathetic, surrounding themselves with the trappings of royalty to hide what they are. “What’s your name?” the slaver says.

Anakin looks at them with that same smile. His blue eyes are bright. A terrible sense of wrongness pervades Obi Wan. He wants to recoil away from his dearest friend like a rotting corpse.

“I have none,” Anakin says, “It was stolen from my mother. She had to make her own.”

He shifts his head slightly, allowing the high-collared tunics he always wears to move. A slave brand flashes on the back of his neck. “The Fire Nation would never tolerate people like you,” Anakin says, a baffling statement, as though the Fire Nation were not once slavers, too, generations ago. Even now, some whisper.

Then Anakin begins to bend. It feels like he has stolen the sun from the sky, the amount of heat he is pulling into the air. Ahsoka gasps and chokes.

_Don’t run away, Anakin, please. You have friends here. I’m here._

_Killing the Hutts won’t bring anyone back. We’re peace-keepers, Anakin, not warriors. I know you miss your mother, Anakin, but she is safe, where she is._

_Nothing can harm you, in Coruscant._

Obi Wan watches Anakin set the slavers alight.  
  


Obi Wan struggles with the sand-sailor, gritting his teeth beneath the muzzle Durge, a maniacal Separatist bounty hunter, and the Zygerrians have placed him in. They’d reached Kadavo, only to be taken by the Zygerrians once more. Obi Wan might have lived his whole life, muzzled like an animal, if there had not been one wrench in Dooku’s barbarity.

Ventress.

He dislikes referring to her as that. It’s the name of the slave family who owned her. But Obi Wan does not pretend she has done this out of compassion, taking the most valuable of the slavers’ cargo.

Dooku left her for dead on Jablim. His eyes track the brand on her neck as she mutters to the rest of the group. Pale-skinned girls who look like her, one so young she must be carried between the elders. Some of the girls from Kiros, who are airbenders. Ahsoka and Barriss, who had come. Luminara must be losing her mind searching for them.

“Running, Kenobi?”

“I learnt from you,” he bites out.

_“Fun-ny.”_

“There’s nothing on Dathomir. You’re deceiving them that there’s salvation that way.”

Her fist hits the side of the sand-sailor.

“You think you can just release them here?” Ventress spits. She nods her shaven head towards the rising dust cloud approaching. Durge, other Separatist warriors.

“I’m not leaving Anakin behind!”

 _He’ll think I have betrayed him,_ his mind whispers. He has never felt more helpless.

“You’re going to weigh one man against us all, False Jedi?” Obi Wan goes still, dropping the ropes in his hands. Ahsoka and Barriss look between them, but they don’t jump into the conversation. His face still hurts from where Ventress has smashed her fist into it, tossing aside bending for pure rage.

Obi Wan breathes in strongly. Control. He must not give in to these emotions.

“We have a five minutes start, Kenobi,” Ventress says.

His eyes flick over to her. He takes in the drawn faces around him.

“You want that damn thing off?” Ventress snaps, moving closer to him. She pulls a blade from her long skirts, raising it and her hands. Finally, Obi Wan nods. He feels her warm fingers grab his chin, fitting the blade against the lock. Her grey eyes don’t meet his, focused on her task. The strap snaps, and he can breathe. She draws backwards. “Get on,” Ventress orders the others. “We make for Dathomir.”

What would Anakin do in this situation? After Jablim, after they had been forced to leave the locals to their fate… Obi Wan doesn’t want to think of it.

_I’m sorry, Anakin._  
  


“Did you love her, Obi Wan?”

Anakin’s voice pierces through the veil of grief. There’s surprise in his voice, almost disgust. The body is still warm in his arms.

(Was Anakin there when he and Asajj had been forced to fight together to keep the slaves safe? No choice but to trust. When their hands began to find one another, shooting fire over each other’s shoulders, making sure, making sure…

Was Anakin there when two pale blonde Dathomiri were killed in their flight, when little Merrin had screamed and cried and tried to run, “Ilyana’s dead,” she had wailed as Ahsoka clutched her to her breast, and Ventress had looked so stricken?

Had he been there, as they flew on the sky-bison, when he’d asked Ventress how she knew there was anything, on Dathomir? _I was stolen from there, she tells him, her voice raw and rasping_ – he finds when she is not furious and spitting and angry, she is not a very verbal person, but that’s okay, he speaks enough for them both – _as a child._

_I knew a Jedi once._

_He was good. He was kind._

There’s still hope for you, he wants to say.)

There had been nothing on Dathomir. Only ruins. Some women, left from the raid by a man they called Sidious. They touched Ventress’ face, whispering. “Something about her eyes. Perhaps it is indeed Talzin’s child.”

And Ventress had wept, for her lost homeland, a terrible sound.

He convinced her to go back. To fight against the Zygerrians, to free all the slaves, her final revenge against Dooku. “You just want to go back to your brother,” she spat. But she agreed. Clasped his hands and let him pull her to her feet.

And now she is dead, killed saving his life. But Durge is dead, brutally and violently dead, and perhaps that will satisfy her soul enough to pass on.

( _Asajj_ , she had whispered, blood on her lips, _my name is…Asajj. Papers…in study… Dooku… use them… Jedi…_ )

Asajj. Morning sun. Is that why her body is still warm, even though she is dead? “I took vows, Anakin,” he says. There was no kiss, no embrace, no confession, nothing. His fingers trace her jawline, pressing down all the anger, all the hate, that bubbles from his lips.

“I don’t think it was love,” Anakin says, and he doesn’t _want_ to know what Anakin thinks love is. Obi Wan pulls Asajj’s body into his arms. He sees Ahsoka and Barriss embracing the freed slaves of Kiros, their fingers intertwined. Later. He’ll lecture Barriss later. Or leave it to Luminara. “I’ll bring her to Dathomir. She…should be with her people.”

Anakin nods. Hesitantly, “I thought you were gone, Obi Wan.”

“I’m not,” Obi Wan says tiredly. “I’m not. I’m right here.”

“Don’t ever disappear like that, Master. You’re the only brother I have.”

They clasp forearms tightly, until Anakin calms. Obi Wan does not admit to himself that feeling human touch stops his trembling. There is time, later, to reflect, on the nature of attachment.  
  


The old Temple on Coruscant’s top looked as though an explosive had gone off inside it. Jyn approached it cautiously, hoping that her dress would make her look more innocent. The front was lined with four huge, broken statues, depicting wise monks in positions of meditation. It was very large, with a colonnaded front, each carved with, Jyn realised, scenes of the Four Nations. Five large spires rose up from the top, somewhat awkward against Coruscant’s usual architecture.

There seemed to be no one guarding it, but if the Temple had been sacked at some point, for whatever reason, she reasoned everything inside had been taken or burnt. With that renewed confidence, Jyn walked up the steps and through the front, down the long passageway of columns and ravaged hanging tapestries.

Her first impression: blood on the floor. Old, once she swiped her fingers across. As she’d suspected, alcoves for relics or books were empty. Her mother or father might have wept for the knowledge lost, but Jyn had precious little time.

Pulling the letter, she scanned the instructions once more. Beneath a meditation chamber. Jyn passed through courtyards of fountains and overgrown bushes and weeds, simple bedrooms of rotting straw mattresses, passageways of beautiful carven arches and circular doors, empty rooms of chairs arranged in a circle, a library of towering empty shelves and dusty vaulted ceilings. She shuddered. It was very tempting to climb up one of the towers and see what lay at the top, but that seemed dangerous. She wasn’t meant to be here.

The meditation room was simple in design. Light flowed in through slits on the walls. An eight-sided room, with the same symbol on the Jedi Tile, made in tile-work on the floor. It was extremely intricate. Beneath – the letter implied it was possible to access, which meant there was concealed opening.

Jyn ran her hands over every possible surface. No bricks shifted at her touch, or, sweaty and irritated, punches. Grinding her teeth, fire burst from her hands.

And then she saw it.

Jyn stepped backwards, pressing herself against the wall. Beneath the symbol of two wings, was a second design. A sun, spreading outwards. The two designs interlocked. Stretching out her hands, Jyn let fire pour into these intersections.

There was a creak of an old locking mechanism. With a rumble, the floor unfurled like a flower, revealing a series of steps disappearing into the darkness.  
  


Winter in the Fire Nation brings lashing rains that provoke mud-slides in the volcanic hills. The temperature drops. The air feels thick, still unbearably humid, but always threatening rain. Spring is coming, though. The season of the earthbenders. The thick clouds have parted, dappling the caldera of Coruscant in piercing golden light.

Anakin has still not mastered lightning. The dawn is a strong moment for firebenders. They stand on the tiled floor of the Temple’s courtyard. Obi Wan watches Anakin slide through the steps of lightning. Even he cannot truly instruct Anakin. To bend lightning is the most difficult firebending technique. Few have ever mastered it.

Two fingers extended on his right hand, Anakin draws them through the air in an arc. His left hand follows, bringing his hands together near his chest. He extends his right hand, preparing for a lightning bolt to fire off. Only fire explodes outwards, sending Anakin crashing backwards. He growls, resting his head in his hands.

The Separatist Wars have raged for two years now. Ahsoka is gone, when the Fire Nation had found Asajj’s papers implicated her as a traitor. _I can’t stay here,_ she had said, before she walked away, every step too heavy for a girl who walked in the clouds. If there had been a childhood for Anakin, or Ahsoka, it is gone now.

“This is pointless! Let’s spar, again,” Anakin snaps. “Go on, throw some fire at me.”

“Anakin, you know you’re almost certain to beat me. You’re not pushing yourself,” Obi says, “You’re self-destructing. Here. Let’s do something different.”

“Which is?”

“Talk. Feel. Calm down, Anakin.”

Reluctantly, Anakin sits back down.

“The key to bending lightning,” Obi Wan says, sitting down beside Anakin, “Is complete calm. The perfect moment between rage and serenity, humanity and savagery.”

Anakin is silent. Gently, Obi Wan touches his shoulder. “Let some of it out, Anakin. Let yourself feel it, before you let it go.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to use rage or hate when I firebent.”

This is true. “Yes. So, I want you to look for something…brighter. Something that brings you peace, to balance your feelings. Come. Let us meditate.”

At first, Anakin is skittish. Weary. But slowly, they begin to breathe in time together. He can feel Anakin slowly loosening, something unlocking inside him. “What do you see?” Obi Wan asks.

Quiet.

Then, “My mother.”

Anakin murmurs, “She’s stoking the fire in the hut at night, in Tatooine. She was always good at that. Her hands were…warm. Like a second sun. She was singing to me as I fell asleep. Lighting the candles, to hold back the dark.”

And Obi Wan can almost feel it. The soft glow of the firelight on Shmi’s worn, tired face. Kissing her son on both cheeks. The taste of warm bread and meat. Something buried so far deep within Anakin’s psyche. A tear slides down Anakin’s face. He feels the same wetness on his own. “What did you…”

“I didn’t do anything,” Obi Wan says soothingly, as Anakin draws back, like a cornered animal, “I only helped you find something you’d forgotten.”

“I don’t know if I can let that go. I have so few,” Anakin whispers.

“Thank you for sharing it, with me,” Obi Wan tells him. “I know things have been difficult lately, Anakin. I know you're upset. But you do yourself no credit when you think yourself lesser for it. There is so much compassion, and _good_ , in you, Anakin. More than what you suffered. You are more than a weapon, than a blunt instrument, than a monster. One day, I know, you will do great things with the power you hold.”

In Anakin’s hand, dance faint sparks. He laughs through the tears, wider than any Obi Wan has ever seen.  
  


They should never have allowed the Queen to invite herself along for the mission. But Queen Padmé has always been a philanthropist, and her authority overrules theirs. Now the Queen is injured. They seek desperately for transport.

“The Chosen One, huh?” a sailor laughs, bending a stream of water, “Never heard of any Chosen One. You like the Avatar, or something?”

Anakin grits his teeth as Obi Wan tries to negotiate. But the Earth and Water people only laugh at their bedraggled and bloodied appearances. “If you’re the Avatar-Chosen One, why don’t you show us something!” they jeer.

“You know,” Anakin hisses, “When I was young, my mother used to tell me stories, of earthbenders that raised cities, or waterbenders that ran on water like it was ice. But you’re not that. You’re weak. You’re pathetic.”

“Who’re you calling pathetic, pale face? Some Avatar -”

“ _Shut up_ about the Avatar,” Anakin snarls, fire blooming from his finger-tips. They draw back, frightened.

It is only by virtue of Padmé waking up that Anakin pauses. The Queen, summoning what remains of her dignity, plucks the small green cap on her head, woven with gold coins that trail through her dark curls. It is enough to barter them a ship. Once Anakin has carefully placed her down in the hold, he steps back onto the wooden deck. Obi Wan has found a Dejarik board in the hold. He moves the wooden tiles between his fingers anxiously, setting and resetting them onto the board. The blue sails seem out of place against their clothing of wine-reds and blacks and cream. “The Jedi have to better, Anakin, we have to -”

“We already are better men,” Anakin says coldly.

He changes tack. “And would you threaten and kill the Fifth Nation Separatists? It’s a civil war, Anakin, not butchery. They have to be tried in courts of their own people.”

“I know that,” he says. “But are the Jedi so arrogant to think that we can _make peace_? We’re already soldiers! We’re barely even secret anymore.”

“For Spirit’s sake, those people you scorn are the same Earth Kingdom as Padmé!” Obi Wan stops. Something wrathful crosses Anakin’s face. He has crossed a line to bring Padmé into this. There is something there that is not safe. He draws back.

“Padmé is unique,” Anakin says, flipping the Jedi Tile over and over. His fingers glow red for a second, burning over the double-wing carving. “There are…exceptions.”

“And you think the rest of them are like the Hutts,” Obi Wan states.

“I want the War to end,” Anakin says softly, sagging into himself.

“And it will,” Obi Wan says reassuringly, even though he doesn’t believe it himself, “There will be peace. I know it.”

“Hope,” Anakin murmurs. “I will bring you hope, Obi Wan.”

Anakin turns the tile over and over in his hand. His eyes track the gulls overhead, flying free through the sky.  
  


The Nelvaan chant, invoking the Spirits. Why the Spirits have led them here he doesn’t understand, but the laws of this people must be respected. The Sieges in the far-flung regions of the world are on-going. They are here for a reason, good or ill, they will find out soon enough.

“Sacrifice,” Obi Wan translates. A mother’s sacrifice, the same story over and over.

The shaman’s eyes are far away, seeming to pierce through an unseen veil. He throws more strange herbs into the flames. The smoke billows up, forming shapes.

“What is he saying now?” Anakin asks, when Obi Wan goes silent.

“He is saying,” Obi Wan murmurs, “ _Twin Suns?_ Looking back, no, he says ‘to go forward, you will go back’, East instead of West, South instead of North… ‘Someone from the past will reappear; speak his, no, _their_ , name, and recognise them as they truly are, and you will achieve serenity.’”

Obi Wan’s first thought is of Ahsoka, but the fortune may refer to someone who is no longer living, like Anakin’s mother – _someone from the past will reappear_ – but the Nelvaan language had clearly used a plural. A group of people from Anakin’s past? But who? The slaves of Tatooine? The dead Jedi?

The shaman continues, and the smoke forms a great claw. “Ghost Hand.”

And Obi Wan understands, pulling off Anakin’s glove to reveal the pale, scarred flesh. “Ghost Hand!” he cries. The Nelvaan begin to whisper, speaking of a trial, a quest, Anakin must undertake, in a dark cave of Spiritual power.

(What comes back from the Nelvaan cave, freeing the Nelvaan men from the Separatists' monstrous enslavement, Obi Wan is uncertain of. Barriss heals the remnants of Anakin’s hand, splinted with metal bits to keep it together. He'll never be able to move it again. Anakin’s eyes are far away.

There is never time to talk, for Coruscant is besieged, and Anakin carries him unconscious on his back the entire time. “All thanks to your training,” Anakin says, grinning, and Obi Wan can’t help smile back, proud of how far he’s come.

He never thinks to ask, after. By then, it’s too already too late.)  
  


The waters of Naboo are a beautiful blue-green. Obi Wan cannot deny it is a gorgeous green place, lush with lakes and rolling hills and mountains. The gulls call. He waits until he sees a tiny little ship appear in the harbour, its sails a crisp green, bearing the diminutive monk from whatever mysterious place he has been, meditating and communing. The old master smiles, but his eyes are exhausted. The Soon he will go off to Utapau, hunting General Grievous, with Dooku dead.

Shuffling along, Master Yoda clutches a strange metal contraption in his hands. It appears to be multiple interlocked circles, where the outer ring could be circled to align with markings on the inner rings. Together, they walk towards the earthbent forms of the Royal Palace.

“Know you, the method to determine the Earth Avatar?” Yoda questions, studying the device in his gnarled hands.

“I will confess, no.”

“Geomancy. Read the lines of the earth. Narrowing, until a singular place, they find.”

It is simple and blunt. Classically Earth Kingdom. “Dreams, I have. Foreboding.”

Obi Wan’s blood is cold. Mace is in prime health. Save a grievous wound on the battlefield, he is fully expected to lead a long and productive life. The ritual to search should not work. Not yet. Carefully, he says, “And it has led us to Naboo?”

Yoda shakes his head, stabbing his cane in the direction of the Royal Palace. Somewhere in Obi Wan’s mind, the first pinprick of suspicion makes itself felt. “So, we’ve come here…”

“Indecent questions, we must ask,” Yoda chuckles, but there is little humour in it.

The search is exhausting and difficult. Few women are willing to part with these details to two unknown, mysterious monks. But at last, they stand by the river bank. “There’s no one,” Obi Wan declares, “No one in the Royal Palace is with child. Of course, there might be someone who isn’t there right now, but -”

“One, there is.”

The suspicion blooms, as verdant as the garden Anakin wishes to build. Yoda’s eyes fall on him sadly. “No. No, that’s _impossible_ ,” he whispers, half a plea.

Padmé has to be six months pregnant, maybe more, Obi Wan guesses. Mace is going to die, very, very soon.

The next Avatar will be Anakin Skywalker’s child.

“What does it _mean_?”

Yoda clutches the geomancy tool tight in his hands. “Know not, I do.”  
  


Obi Wan will never forget the day he met Anakin, pale and frightened and shaking. “I thought I was the only one,” Anakin had gasped, watching the flames dance in his hands.

What an absurd statement. There is a whole nation, full of them.

And yet, to a slave, the only one in a desert, with burning hands…  
  


“A prophecy, that misread, could have been,” Yoda suggests. The word echoes in Obi Wan’s mind, as loud as Anakin’s anger to spy on the Fire Lord himself.

“What would it mean,” Mace asks, “For a man to be Sól come again? At least, that is the version we have.”

“Happened now, what has happened before. Happened now, what will happen. Time is an illusion, and so is death,” Yoda muses, “Then Skywalker is a Spirit, in mortal body. Was a Spirit before, and will become the next Sun Spirit.”

“Then shouldn’t we see some evidence of that?”

“Said I, misread, could it have?”

 _Twin Suns._ Obi Wan shakes his head, smiling firmly. “Even if he is not, Anakin will not let me down. He _never_ has.”  
  


The Queen appears so small, so fragile, despite the opulence of her deep purple chamber robes that artfully cover how round her belly is. _I have dreams,_ she had said once, _dreams of people from every nation I have never met._

He should have guessed, then. But how could he have even begun to unravel the twisting threads, that Padmé carries the child who will be the Avatar?

“I don’t believe you,” she says, her eyes glass-like.

Here, in her apartment of beautiful white columns and statues, cutting through the light and leaving slats of darkness, a courtyard bursting with verdant green, he can imagine the two of them, flitting between shadows, love tucked away in these alcoves, behind pillars. The knight stepping through the darkness of the atrium to see his green lady, standing in the sunlight, waiting.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers.  
  


Mustafar explodes around them. The volcano is erupting, spewing lava and flaming rocks into the sea. Padmé’s face is ashen. The burning man has done this for her, his green Lady, caging her within this world of fire and metal.

“I love you,” Padmé whispers, throwing her arms around him. The knife slides from her hand into Anakin’s side. He gasps, stumbling backwards. He rips the knife from his flesh. It hits the ground, spilling blood. Anakin presses a burning hand to the broken skin. The wound cauterizes.

There is naked fear on Padmé’s face. She sees Anakin’s love for what it is – a condition. Anakin places his burning hands around his wife’s throat. She crumples to the ground at Obi Wan’s yell, two scarlet burns around her neck. Anakin, Vader, is on fire. Flames lick the ground as he walks. _You will not take her from me!_ He roars.

“No Spirit changed you,” Obi Wan says, “You did this, Anakin.”

“Master Yoda always said that the world is a bunch of unruly students. The Jedi must quietly guide them. In time, the cycle will break.” He shakes his head. “I’ve been at the mercy of this, waiting for the cycle to end. The world is a child that won’t listen, screaming and wailing for its freedoms! It needs to be slapped until it learns to be quiet! You, and _her_ , you fear me!”

He must stop Anakin. He must.

Poisonous gas chokes the air as the volcano erupts. The two men throw themselves at each other. Obi Wan’s bright blue fire meets Anakin’s red. Anakin Skywalker burns. “I loved you,” Obi Wan cries.

 _Take care of Anakin, for me,_ he had once sworn.

A tiny house on a desolate rock. Luminara pulling two babies from Padmé’s body. War has begun. Most of the Mandalorian _qi_ -blockers have betrayed them, viciously killing as many benders and Jedi as they could. Had they brought that on themselves, taking children into War and treating them like pawns? The Fire Nation is closed to them. Master Yoda raises his hand and touches the twin’s foreheads. “As the Spirits spoke, true, they are,” he says.

Obi Wan buries his face in his hands.

He watches Padmé, face tear-stained, clutching the two babies to her breasts, letting them drink hungrily. A little girl and a little boy. Two angry red burns close around her neck like a vice. She begins to sing, a lullaby from her people from Naboo. Her voice is cracked, so small, but in it is only love.

“ _Durme, durme_ ,” she sings, holding them tight, _sleep, sleep, mother’s beloved. Free from worry and from pain._

_Free from worry, and from pain._  
  


Jyn held her palm out, flames glowing from her palm. She walked slowly through the damp walls of the passageway. The steps had ended. Now she moved through a low-ceilinged tunnel. She could see something far ahead. A person?

She stepped through the entrance way, into a small chamber, narrow and tall. It was a statue, sitting on a low-platform. There was something else, against the walls. A statue of a Spirit, one Jyn didn’t know. It was a woman, with her hair pinned back from her face. Her dress swirled around her. Dragons coiled around her feet. The items against the walls – they were dragon bones. As tall as a house, the giant rib-cage towered over her. Dragons. Her hands shook as she stroked the smooth bone.

The woman’s face seemed to glow. Who was this Spirit?

Jyn knelt, examining the carvings at the base. Some of it was writing, in Fire Nation script so old she could only just parse through it. There were images carved as well. “Once, when there was only sea, and the islands, a sailor from the far ice was shipwrecked,” she read aloud, the words slipping through her tongue clumsily, trying to find their meaning.

“There, a winged serpent flew down. The serpent told the sailor of how a star had fallen upon her home, and all her family was burnt up, aside from her, the only daughter.”

She paused. The writing had taken on a different character, it had shifted into a personal pronoun. “‘I think it was her bending I first fell in love with.’”

Jyn had never romanticized her firebending. If she were to describe it, she would call it brutal, destructive. She continued to read. “The sailor in turn told the winged serpent of a desert of ice where the sun only rose for six moon cycles. ‘Then you must worship it,’ the serpent realised, ‘you must not fear it as others do.’

“‘I am afraid of you,’ the sailor admitted, ‘as I am afraid of the great ocean of black glass, that seems to drown the stars, that gives me plentiful fish and kelp.’”

In the carvings, two figures bent and danced around each other, mirroring each other in perfect time. The hot flare of the sun symbol meeting the wings of the Jedi symbol.

_I think it was her bending I first fell in love with._

What were you searching for here, Mama? Firebending wasn’t meant to be beautiful. It was burning flesh and agony, endless drills beneath the uncaring hands of her masters, rage and hatred and spite fuelling every blow.

“The ocean gave the sailor life. And it could take life away. One day the sailor did not come back. From the body, the winged serpent pulled the sailor’s heart. She cracked it beneath her great teeth, scattering the pieces out towards the night sky.

“ _Maat_ ,” Jyn read, no, that was wrong. The script was referring to some spirit, but it meant something different. “Balance. And the serpent began to bend.”

_I think it was her bending I first fell in love with._

Slowly, compelled by some unseen power, Jyn looked up, allowing the fire in her hand to extinguish. Kyber. Hundreds of kyber crystals, embedded in the ceiling. They glittered green and blue and purple, flowing and flaring up –

The Polar Lights.

Jyn gaped at the ceiling, watching the colours ripple across the darkness. The colours seemed to make the dragon bones glow. Was this what Lyra had found beneath the Temple she had once called home, clutching her infant daughter to her breast? Who was this Spirit?

There was only a little bit of writing left on the base. It looked much more recent. It was written in Aurebesh, the script for Basic, which hardly anyone used, even if they could read it. Had the mysterious new carver intended to leave a message for as many as possible?

Jyn was rubbish at reading Aurebesh. “Dathomir,” she managed.

She flinched backwards. Hurriedly, she bent fire, and left the hidden shrine behind.  
  


Padmé straps Leia to her back, deftly tying the sling. It has been several weeks until she has fully recovered from giving birth. Obi Wan doesn’t know how he could have managed without Tsabin and Luminara. Master Yoda has left, into exile. Luminara will disappear as well, returning to her people.

For the first time, the Queen of Naboo looks like an ordinary person. He supposes she is not one anymore. With her ‘death’, the title has passed on to some distant cousin named Apailana, with Padmé’s own sister having abdicated long ago. Now Padmé’s dark curls are free of any hats, veils, scarfs, jewels, falling in a simple braid down her back. He swaddles Luke in his arms.

Padmé’s eyes are filled with tears as she pushes the cloth aside. “ _Imma loves you,_ ” she whispers in her Naboo dialect, kissing Luke’s forehead. Wiping her face, she takes Tsabin’s hand and steps into the _gulet_ , a two-masted ship that will carry them away into the Southern Isles.

(In Naboo, a gondola carries the body of the Queen towards her mausoleum, lights burning on the water as the Fire Nation forces take control of the island.)

Obi Wan watches the ship disappear across the dark water, preparing for his own journey. The last of the Jedi, into a desert haunted by Tuskens, krayt dragons, and old ghosts that whisper in the darkness –

_He will avenge us._  
  


It was dark as she ran towards the prison, easily slipping past the rotating shift of guards. Pressing close to the walls, she grabbed the first guard she could find, pressing her knife to his throat. “Where’s Bodhi Rook?” she rasped.

“D-downstairs,” the guard stammered. Releasing him, she pressed the knife against his back, prodding him to show her the way. Thankfully, they passed no one as they walked towards a stone staircase, following it down into a long passageway.

Jyn froze, grabbing the guard’s shoulder to stop him.

Bodhi was laughing. He was sitting in his cell, speaking to the man in the cell across. The other man had firebent flames in his hands, illuminating the two of them. Jyn stared, standing there in the darkness, as the soft golden light painted over their faces like the kiss of the bright skies above.

Jyn swallowed.

“Take me back,” she said, “Tell anyone I was here and I’ll have you executed.”

When she was out of the prison, she ran, ran from the revelation, ran until she reached the apartment, folding herself over and sobbing.  
  


The Spirit World was beginning to fade. Obi Wan’s message was ending. “Wait!” Luke yelled, “Wait, don’t go!”

But the edges of Obi Wan’s face was flickering in and out of focus. The clouds began to thin, revealing an infinite blackness spreading outwards from the mountain’s edges. “I must go now. Vader may soon sense me. You have everything you need.”

“There’s good in him!” Luke called, as Obi Wan began to fade. They plunged. There was a heavy, rasping breath.

  
He sat in the cool, darkness of his castle, built on the foundations of the life he had left behind. Obi Wan. But that was impossible. Obi Wan had died. Ghosts were not real. The dead went on through the Wheel of Reincarnation, where they were lost to him –

Vader dug his nails into his knees.

_Focus._

He had always had difficulty entering the Spirit World. Sidious had no interest in pursuing life after death. He reached up and touched his temples, forgetting he was still wearing his helmet and face-plate. Ever since Mon Cala, the headaches were getting worse, his sleep more restless despite the waterbending slaves applying cool water to his skin, tearing up the soft, shameful weakness in his very heart –

A hand touched him for a moment. Vader stiffened.

“Are you hurt, Father?”

It’s an illusion. A cruel trick by Obi Wan’s vengeful spirit. _Burn them._

Sidious would do that. A cruel twist of the mouth, then blinding pain. _Burn them._ Vader raised a hand, forgetting there was no bending in the Spirit World.

 _My Master, I already have. I have tested them._ There, their hands, slowly forming into pale red flesh. _It is there._

“Like Padmé,” he murmured, and the girl scowled, grabbing the boy’s shoulder. “Shut up,” she spat, “Let’s go.”

And now he heard the voice of his mother, as the illusion faded and he was left alone in the thick swamp of the Spirit World.

_Oh Ani, it's not what you see, but what you carry..._  
  


Jyn stared at the walls of the house. The desk her father had worked at. _Never change, Stardust._ The devotion her mother had shown to their shrine. The books from across all Four Nations. _Trust the Spirits._ The old hidden message space, where her mother had stored letters from Saw. _Have the courage to do what’s right._ The Dejarik board, still set up. _I don’t want to die like this._ Jyn fingered the Jedi tile unconsciously. _Balance_ … This house was a temple. And she, a statue, trapped in time.

She got to her feet.

In a matter of hours, Iden and Ciena were there, drinking with her. “I’m a little envious,” Ciena said, “A Gala. I remember when I graduated - there was a party. Was there dancing?”

“Around the subject.”

Ciena surprised her by laughing. “Well, I can’t dance anyways, not like Iden.”

“I don’t dance, etiquette lessons or not,” Iden said, “No exceptions.”

“Aww, Iden, you’re no fun.” Iden kicked Jyn under the table at her smirk. Ciena continued, “Sanitation department won’t have any parties, so we can’t go together!”

“Where do you work in Coruscant?” Jyn glanced over at Iden. “I mean…”

Ciena made a face. “No, I know. No rich daddy. _Shush_ Iden, it’s true. I was transferred from sanitation crewmen to sanitation protocol in record management.”

Jyn’s eyebrows rose. “Records? In the Palace?”

“Oh, no. There’s a record centre just outside the city limits. On Scarif.”

Slowly, Jyn placed the goblet down. It was just a curiosity. “Oh? What kind?”  
  


Luke opened his eyes. Leia was beside him. Waiting patiently as well, were his friends. He met Leia’s brown eyes. This was his sister. The other half of his soul. Their matching hands of raised, red scar. Luke stood up abruptly. “We need to get off Mustafar, Vader sensed Ben and might come to investigate.”

They boarded the Falcon quickly, Chewie, Han, and him working the sails and engine as fast as possible until they were speeding away from the black edges of Mustafar. “So, what did you learn?” Chirrut asked.

Leia began to explain, the group sitting down on the deck to listen. “Wait, your Mum was a Queen, she didn’t abdicate?” Han squeaked out. “You’re royalty?”

Leia rolled her eyes, kissing him on the cheek. Her eyes grew sad momentarily. “I had forgotten… Mother’s language. I had forgotten I knew it.”

“So, what was the point of the story?” Enfys asked, “What happened…how could he betray his family like that?”

“Born bad,” Baze muttered under his breath.

Luke shook his head. “No. I don’t think that was the point. I think… the story was about how much people, no matter who they are and where they’re from, are capable of great good and great evil, cruelty and forgiveness.”

Luke looked at his family. That was what they were. “And I think… The story Obi Wan told us, it was because I lost sight… of what made all the difference,” Luke whispered. “One of the chakras we closed was…”

“The Sound Chakra,” Leia finished, “Truth, which is blocked by lies we tell ourselves.”

 _I thought I was the only one_ , Anakin had said once. “The story was about friendship. Friendships so strong that…they can even transcend lifetimes.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Enfys looked up, meeting his gaze. He had seen her in the Yavin Swamp. He’d been meant to meet these people. Whatever happened, they were here. They would help him find his way.

Luke took her warm hand in his other. “I don’t see why not.”

Cautiously, Leia grasped his burnt hand with her own. One by one, the others joined in.

Han rubbed his chin. “Well, transcending is a strong word…”

“Han, shut up and hold hands,” Leia said.

And so, they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always appreciated. Honestly just having people interested in this story makes me so happy, dear readers!


	35. Book Three: Rebirth VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a week of my mental health being...ughsdks... we are back for our regular scheduled programming! Some notes:
> 
> 1) The story Jyn tells is partially based off the story of Circe, Scylla and Glaucus in Greek mythology (also, the fantastic book Circe by Madeline Miller) as well as the story from raisindeatre's and you feel your heart (taking root in your body), which itself is lifted from Leigh Bardugo's "The Too Clever Fox". 
> 
> 2) Jyn's dream of the white snake appears in Chapter 27, while Liya appears in Chapter 18. 
> 
> 3) I really love this unreleased [track](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIoKakbs2LQ) for an important Jyn character moment that happens this chapter...
> 
> Content warning: Racism towards a black bi-racial character (Enfys).

Bodhi dreamt. Vaguely, he could hear the soft breathing of Kyle nearby, so familiar to him now. It was soothing, something that in these two long months had become so gentle to hear. Somehow, there was light pouring into the floor of the cell.

The rats were ragged, silvery shapes. They scurried across the floor in hypnotic circles. Nosing the floor for fallen grains from his prison gruel, bits of wax or dust.

They crawled up and down the walls, vanishing through the stone.

Bodhi sat up, shocked awake.

“They’re getting into my cell,” he whispered into the darkness.

Bodhi got his feet. He walked forward until he found the far wall of the cell. Fingers and hands scrabbled across the surface. Finally, by standing on the chamber-pot, Bodhi felt the seam where the wall met the ceiling.

On his finger-tips, he felt the faintest touch of a breeze.  
  


Jyn had no idea how Iden had managed to get them a sailing ship. It’s very small, good only for fisherfolk. But Ciena’s face lit up the moment Iden dragged them towards the harbour. The little boat waited for them, its crimson sails fluttering in the wind. Coruscant’s harbour was studded with spiky black naval ships. The Fire Nation had lost much of its fleet during the Siege of the North. But steadily, ships were built once more. But the days of naval battles were largely over.

The Fire Nation had given up on the Water Tribes, focusing on quelling the rebellions in the conquered Earth Kingdom.

Amongst the military craft were smaller fishing boats. Lifting the hem of her dress, Jyn awkwardly stepped onto the shifting wooden deck. She settled down, resting the basket of food beside her. Ciena was guiding Iden’s hands over the rigging, using the oar to push them away from the dock. Jyn smiled briefly. She turned her face southwards, watching as they skimmed through the black cliffs of ships. The city grew further and further away. The dark sides of the caldera swung shut. She trailed her fingers in the water. It had been so clear in the South and North Poles. On the Outer Islands of the Fire Nation, without the coal-guzzling ships, you could see straight down to the coral reefs.

“You do that a lot,” she heard Iden say.

“What?” Jyn said, turning her head.

“Looking… never mind. I’ll tell you later. I’m starving. Come on, Ciena, let’s weigh anchor!”

“Once we go through these rocks!” Ciena called. She laughed with joy, turning and skipping the sail-boat through passageways of boulders as they arced across Coruscant’s coastline. Jyn and Iden clung on. Finally, Ciena dropped anchor in the middle of the sea. They bobbed on the open water. The fishing boats were still in view. Jyn watched an old woman pull a fat fish from the water, its scales shining in the late morning light. “Idiot,” Iden said affectionately, as Jyn dug through the basket for bread and cheese. Ciena kissed her cheek in gratitude.

They were quiet as they ate. The only sounds were munching, and the splash and call of the fisherfolk.

“Hey, Jyn, tell a story,” Iden said. Ciena nodded. Jyn stared out at the ocean. She thought of her father taking her out in a small boat in Lah’mu. In the memory, he is eternally young and alive and kind. There is no War. “Have you heard the story of the swamp spirit and the fisherman?”

They shook their heads. “It was when the world was very young. Spirits were everywhere. One Spirit was an unremarkable creature, just a glowing wisp in the peat bogs.

“For this reason, though she was something of Sól’s fire, her kin spurned her. They whispered, _she has hair like an old dog, voice like nails. No one else will have her._ She is no fiery star, like Sól.

“One day, the swamp spirit spies a fisherman. He is handsome, with strong, broad hands. His hands that drew fat fish from the sea are swift, not cruel.

“He treats her kindly, and gently. And she has never longed more than to marry him, this simple fisherman.

“Every day, she goes to meet this man. She asks the warm currents to bring him fish to fill his nets. She listens to his quiet envy as he speaks of the toil beneath the heat of the Sun. Her heart aches.

“For he is mortal. One day he will die, and he is no Spirit. So, the swamp spirit sought an herb that could make her wishes come true.”

“That’s not possible,” Iden interrupted.

“It’s a story, impossible things happen in stories,” Jyn said irritably. “Anyways, she succeeds. She feeds her fisherman, and his flesh melts away. He is a Spirit, like her.

“At first, she is delighted. But as time passes, she sees him dancing with others grander than she. ‘I have never been so happy’, he tells her. But he does not want her, this lesser sunbeam.

“’Why?’ she cries, ‘I loved you when your skin was browned by the sun, and your hands were covered in fish guts!’”

“’Speak not of it! I do not wish to think of days when my senses were so dull, when my power was so weak. I am more, now, and I can have the very best,’ he tells her.”

“’I can be the best for you,’ she pleads. ‘I can please you. I will be forever loyal. I will do anything.’”

Iden opened her mouth, but Ciena elbowed her. “Shush. Go on, Jyn.”

Jyn rolled her eyes. “So she goes to the water Spirit her fisherman has fallen in love with. ‘You are so beautiful,’ she tells her. The Water Spirit longs for the company of other women, for so many are envious of the attention and scrutiny laid upon her by the male Spirits. So she listens to the wisp.”

“That’s stupid,” Iden muttered, “Shouldn’t they be angry at the men who sort them by good and bad, and not the women who only want to survive in the men’s court?”

“Shouldn’t they?” Jyn said, and Iden drew back, frowning. “At last, trust was earned. The trap was sprung. The Water Spirit drank the herb, and began to cry in pain.

“’I wanted to be your friend,’ the Water Spirit moaned.

“’It is always the same trap,’ the wisp said sadly, ‘I wanted to be loved. Belonging is the essence of humanity. Loneliness is the trap, my friend, and it ensnares us all.’”

There was silence on the boat. Jyn went quiet. _Belonging is the essence of humanity,_ those had been the words of the white snake in her dream. Ciena crunched a piece of bread in her mouth. “So, what’s the story mean, then?”

Jyn thought for a moment. The summer heat was hot and sticky. Somewhere, Bodhi sat in a dank, dark cell. “You must be anchored,” she whispered, “Or else you will drink from every cup that’s offered and never know that it’s poison.”

“But what if you had been taught your whole life to drink the poison?” Iden said, resting her chin in her hands. “What if the meaning has already been carved into your face, by someone else?”

“I don’t know,” Jyn said, defeated, “I don’t have all the answers.”

Ciena trailed her fingers in the water. “Well, I have a better story, from the fisherfolk in my home island. It’s about the Dragontail Current.”

Jyn frowned. “What’s that?”

“It’s a current of warm water that flows from the Fire Nation coast, hundreds of leagues, until it reaches the South Pole seas. It brings fish with it,” Ciena explained.

“The Fire Nation to the South Pole?” Jyn said slowly.

She stared down into the clear, blue-green water, seeing her own reflection sparkling above the shoals of fish. The ocean had taken her mother, her father, her kyber necklace. She imagined it carrying her, further and further away, towards shores of ghostly icebergs and falling snow, to a tribe of dark-eyed people, where the sun rises for a hundred days, or disappears for a hundred more. But it gave, it gave the fish and strange foods that fed Cassian’s people.

_I don’t want to die like this,_ Cassian’s voice whispered in her ear.  
  


The twins completed their airbending training on the day the Falcon reached Var-Shaa. She had done what she had returned for. She had given the Avatar more power. The island was very close to Coruscant. A ship-building and docking yard, it was crawling with dense factories and military personnel. “Congratulations,” she had told them, trying to smile, “You’re airbending masters. All thirty-six tiers.”

The twins smiled back.

After she, Luke, and Han went to purchase food from the market. “We don’t serve your kind here,” the stall-owner snapped, as she approached.

Flushing in anger, Enfys pressed her basket to her hip and strode off to another stall. It was the same statement over and over. As she stepped towards another stall, she felt something strike her face. Enfys touched her cheek, feeling the slick mass of a rotting fruit. The stall-owner spat a word.

“Stop that!” Luke shouldered through people to stand next to her.

“Keep better watch over your servant,” the stall-owner responded, “Can’t have -” he said a word Enfys didn’t know, “wandering around like she owns the place.”

“What did he say?” Luke hissed, as they walked away, finding another stall. The owner was equally cold-eyed, but kept their tongue.

“It means savage, barbarian,” Han responded angrily, keeping one arm around Enfys’ shoulder until they were safely out of sight of the violent stall-owner. “Seems it’s come back into fashion.”

Enfys despised the Fire Nation. Despised their pale, strange masses of flesh and customs and laws that granted almost everyone nothing. Luke, and Leia, and Han were uncomfortable here, but they looked no different from any other. Cassian danced on the edge, light-skinned for Water Tribe. Only Baze and Chirrut were truly different, but they had other luck.

She was aware that she was light-skinned for her people, but she had never felt darker here. She despised these people they were trying to have rebel against their masters, who hated her for her sex and colour.

“You know,” Enfys said, keeping her voice low as she stacked grain into her basket, “You didn’t answer the question of what to do about your father.”

“Say that again?”

“Mustafar. You answered that what mattered to you was all of us. That you’d been distant – I know it was hard, I know,” she said in a rush, when he lifted his head, guiltily, “But what are you going to _do_ when the eclipse comes?”

Luke was silent. In the meantime, Han began to barter for some of the dried fish at another stall. “I think he’s sick.”

Enfys struggled very, very hard not to snort. “I see.”

“Not like that,” Luke said patiently, “When we were in Mon Cala, you told me that Jyn rarely slept through the night. She was feverish and had headaches. And that was when she was considering changing sides.”

“Please don’t compare them,” Enfys said sharply. “You think Vader is going to change sides? Join us?”

“No,” he admitted quietly, “No, I don’t think so. But it feels…he’s becoming something else.”

“Someone else? Who?”

“When we fell,” she flinched, and Luke grasped her free hand, interlinking their fingers, “He was… There was pain, Enfys. Guilt. Like a father would feel.”

“Pain,” she said derisively, “I gave up on pity a long time ago. It’s easy for you.”

“I’m not asking anyone else to feel the way I do -”

“But you _are_ , Luke!” she cried, pulling her hand free and facing him, “What if you’re wrong? It’s easy for you to believe this because you’re _one of them_.”

He looked like she’d slapped him. “What?”

“You look just like them, you share their blood – you are one of them,” Enfys said, “Not like me. I… I don’t belong here.” In a small, fragile voice, “I want to go home.”

Enfys turned away abruptly. She didn’t want to hear what Luke had to say.  
  


It might have been petty of her to avoid Cassian as well when she returned to their camp. But he was the one orchestrating the rebellions in the Fire Nation and – well, Enfys wasn’t going to admit she was perfectly mature.

She groaned, sitting down and trying to meditate. She heard the scraping of feet. Chirrut. The old monk cocked his head, turning his face towards her in silent question. “You used to always say, I am One with the Spirits, and the Spirits are with me. All is as the Spirits will it.”

“You have never agreed with that, much like Baze,” Chirrut said.

“No,” she said quietly, drawing her knees to her chest. _I saw a vision of you, in the swamp_. “I don’t know if I believe in great destinies. It doesn’t seem fair. It doesn’t seem to be what the world around us is about.”

He was quiet. She watched him turn his cane over and over in his hands. Since he and Baze had reconciled, he looked healthier. Less like the robes were swallowing him. But he moved differently. She reached forward and placed her hand over his. “There was some hope that I lost,” he murmured, “I lost my home, twice. I…”

Living in a communal society had taught Enfys to communicate, to approach others with an open heart and listen. But the anger was rising like a wave.

“You haven’t lost this,” Enfys said fiercely. “No matter what, I’m here. Baze is here. You can come to the Cloudriders, whatever…whatever happens.”

Chirrut clasped her hand tightly. She clung to it tight. “Is something going to happen?”

Enfys traced the callused patterns of his hand. “A while back,” she said slowly, “I met someone who told me to build a better world. She said it wasn’t shameful to be weary. But I’m tired, Chirrut. I hate this country. I don’t have faith in it to be better.”

“That is understandable. You do not have to have love in your heart for people who have none for you,” Chirrut said kindly.

“I’ve only ever known how to fight, Uncle,” she told him, “I’ve been fighting my whole life. I… I don’t even know how to go home.”

“I don’t know how to, either,” Chirrut said. She ran her fingers over the liver spots and wrinkles on his palms, choking on her tears.

“You don’t have to save the world, Enfys Nest. You’re only a young person, after all.”

“But, what else is there?” she whispered. The Spirits are silent.  
  


“Did you and Luke have a fight?”

She turned, crouching from where she was stirring the cook-pot for dinner. It was Cassian. Of course, it would be Cassian. They stood there in the late afternoon light, staring at each other. “No,” she said shortly.

Cassian’s face remained impassive. “I’m asking because there’s a riot happening in town and we’re too close to Coruscant. So, we should remember -”

“The invasion is days away?” Enfys muttered, airbending the fire to heat the _thieb_ , a thick broth of rice, fish, and vegetables. She'd had to substitute most of the ingredients.

He paused. “Did I do something?”

“No,” she repeated. She irritably shook out her sweaty, sticky hair.

“Shouldn’t you be training the twins?”

“They’re airbending masters. They can spar with each other if they need to.”

Cassian’s eyes narrowed. “Are you thinking about leaving?”

Enfys said nothing. She took a sip from the pot, wishing they had the money to purchase proper spices. She glanced over to see Cassian looking contemplative. “Do you know what it was like coming home for the first time from the Earth Kingdom?”

“What does that have to do -”

“I’m trying to tell you something important!” he snapped, “They’re not going to understand. You are going to tell them names and places and they will know that you’ve changed. And you’re going to resent that -”

“Stop it!” She was trembling. “Just stop it. Go back to the Fire Nation people you love so much.”

There was a beat of silence. Cassian walked away. Enfys stirred the _thieb_ , taking another sip. It tasted awful, hot and choking her throat.  
  


Leia watched Enfys for a moment as she scrubbed the dishes. The airbender was staring up at the sky, lying on her back. Cassian and Han had told her about the incidents, but Leia knew there was more to it. “Hey, I want to talk to you,” she said.

Enfys blew out a stream of annoyed breath, but followed after. They sat down on the edge of a cliff that ran down into a narrow beach. Threepio nestled in her lap. Leia thought she heard splashing down below for a moment.

“I’m homesick too,” Leia said, dangling her sandaled feet over the edge. Enfys didn’t speak, but she saw her shoulders loosen. “Of course, it’s different, isn’t it? I’ve got a duty. But Enfys, you can go home, you know. Nobody will stop you.”

Enfys’ hair blew gently in the wind. Leia continued, “I don’t like being here. I know what it’s like to experience great loss.”

“It’s not the same.”

“No, it’s not,” Leia agreed, “I’m just any other Fire Nation person here. I’m lucky.”

They sat quietly. Hesitantly, Leia broached further. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

Enfys turned her face a little towards her. “Is this the moment you tell me to charitable towards your brother or Cassian?”

Leia smiled uncomfortably. “No…no. But Han told me about your conversation with Luke – he wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, that is…”

“He thinks Vader will undergo a…metamorphosis. His exact words were ‘becoming something else’.”

“Yeah,” Leia said. “Something else.” She and Enfys shared a meaningful look.

Long, long ago, her birth father might have had redeemable qualities. But that person has long since disappeared. Vader and his armoured form are nothing but a husk of a person.

He will never be whole again.

Leia rubbed her scar. Tossing back her hair – she hated wearing it loose as a disguise, it got in the way of everything – she prompted, “So, Cassian?”

There’s another splash from down below, but Leia ignored it.

“I don’t have any issue with Cassian,” Enfys said stiffly. Leia stared at her. Enfys threw up her hands. “Alright, alright! Ugh. He just… _Ugh_.”

“I know. Cassian can be inscrutable and non-communicative and practical to the point of ruthless-ness, and his reasons for doing _things_ ,” she said this meaningfully, “Can be hard to understand – but Enfys, he’s not a punching bag for what’s going on with you, either. Cassian considers you a friend. He won’t stop you from leaving.”

“I doubt that.”

“No,” Leia shook her head. She poked Threepio. “It’s like with me and this guy. I complain all the time about him being silly and annoying. But there was one winter he went missing; I cried every day. I need him in my life.”

Her friend sighed, resting her elbows against her knees. “How do you stand him?” she said rhetorically.

Leia laughed, before sobering. “The truth is… all those qualities in Cassian, they’re things I’ve come to depend on.” Enfys’ eyes widened. “When my birth mother died, I was thrust into a very chaotic situation. Alderaan was a mess from the raiding. I never understood why Cassian decided to take care of me, when I first arrived. He was a child too, so it felt safer, until I learnt to trust my parents were my parents. Whatever it was, he was always there for me, always looking out for me.”

“I never thought about that,” Enfys said quietly.

“I’m going to tell you something I never told anyone,” Leia said, looking away for a moment, “But…to tell you the truth, I don’t think I can remember what my birth mother looked like. It makes sense, right? I was only four when she passed.”

Enfys touched her shoulder. “But when I think back to that time, when I try to remember my Mother…Cassian’s face is the only one I can picture.”

Leia squeezed her eyes shut. There was a soft brush of a hand on her shoulder, pulling Leia’s tiny frame against Enfys’ warm body. They stayed like that until Leia began to twitch.

As they walked back towards camp, Leia noticed Cassian was squeezing water out of his hair, fresh from a bath.  
  


Var-Shaa was roiling with energy. Enfys slid quietly through the harbour area. Most of the locals of Var-Shaa had been pushed out to make way for the ship-building factories. The streets were packed with unhappy fisherfolk. Everyone was waiting for something. Soldiers patrolled the streets. Var-Shaa was a powder keg ready to explode. She was already regretting her impulsivity to wander here at night.

Airbenders, always fleeing.

“Hey, you, stop!”

A man, with tan skin and almond eyes, Earth Kingdom features, was running from some soldiers. In that moment, the soldiers began to attack the groups of common people waiting. Var-Shaa exploded with rage and noise. Enfys pressed herself against a wall as the man ran past her, carrying what looked like scrolls. He made eye contact with her, and nodded.

A Rebel Spy. Disguised as a colonist, just like her.

Enfys took off after them, using her airbending to increase her speed. “This way!” she cried, catching up to him. She grasped the man’s arm, tugging him onto the shore line. They began to run through the rocks, stumbling beneath the blasts of fire until they reached a cove. They both stopped to catch their breath.

“Thank you, Enfys Nest,” the man said.

Before she could fully turn, something hit the back of her head. As she fell, the man said, “Didn’t you scum know, the War is over?”

“Traitor,” she gasped, before her body hit the sand, and she knew no more.  
  


Even now, Cassian was a light sleeper. He shifted, eyes opening at the creaking. There was a darker shadow with a large cloud of hair slipping from the Falcon’s hold. Cassian sat up. His eyes met the other light sleeper. “Is she sneaking away?” Baze hissed.

“Her things are still here,” Cassian said, standing up and making a quick scan. His heart clenched. “ _Fuck_. I’m going to go after her.”

He grabbed the military jacket and cap that was part of his disguise. Baze followed him. “You stupid idiot!” he snarled, grabbing the front of Cassian’s shirt. “What did you say to her?”

“What makes you think this is my fault?” Cassian hissed, pushing Baze’s hands off him.

“Because you came back looking like you’d seen a ghost.”

“That had nothing – nothing I was supposed to hear,” Cassian snapped, “She’s been thinking of leaving.”

Baze relaxed. “Sorry. After the little sister and Bodhi…”

Cassian grunted, looking away.

Baze shook his head. “You know what’s wrong with all of you? You think the only thing that makes your life worth living, you, and Chirrut, all of you, it’s some higher purpose. But higher purpose doesn’t let you sleep at night. I know you were going to kill Galen Erso. We all know you considered it.”

“Then why are you _here_?”

“Because these stupid people care about you, and I’m one of them!” Baze yelled.

Cassian drew back. The overwhelming love and compassion on Baze’s face was almost hard to bear. Here, he realised, was the beginning of the answer. What would come after. “I don’t want to be me, either,” Baze said, in a quieter tone, “And we have to make this worth more. You’re young kids. Do the right thing. But stop believing that doesn’t mean there’s anything else out there.

“So what about the Spirits? So what if there’s no hope! There was no hope for Jedha anyways, and you had to keep going, because there was Chirrut and somebody had to take care of him,” Baze closed his eyes for a moment, “Say something before I strangle you.”

“I’m… I… Sorry,” Cassian said, “I… I had no idea…”

His throat closed. _I had no idea everyone was so worried about me,_ felt like even more a slap in the face. He had always been the one keeping the group together. “I’m going after her,” he repeated.

“Yes, and I’m coming with you,” Baze said. Nodding, they set off towards Var-Shaa's urban heart.

Enfys came to inside a metal cell. Pressing a hand to the back of her head, she came back with a patch of dried blood. Slowly, she sat up, checking over herself. She was still in her Fire Nation disguise, the uncomfortable white dress and sandals. Voices came from outside the cell. “Good work, Varko,” a woman was saying.

The woman looked Earth Kingdom as well, with short, closely-cropped hair. Enfys saw other low-ranking Fire Nation soldiers in Var-Shaa’s tiny, cramped jail cell. Two more women, one with tanned skin, the other scarred. Earth Kingdom, she guessed. Varko was the man who had captured her.

With one tug, wind sent Varko slamming into the front of her cell. “Half-Fire Nation scum,” she hissed at them, “Thought you’d picked the winning side?”

“I’m a conscript, Enfys Nest,” Varko said, struggling. Her hands dropped.

“What?” She thought of Bodhi, imprisoned, or worse, somewhere in Coruscant. With growing horror, Enfys looked at this rag-tag squadron, “You sold out your own kind.”

It was unthinkable. She did not want to know this. It only drove it further home how very far away from shore she was. “You speak brave words for a group of people that wipe out those trying to serve the Fire Nation,” the scarred woman hissed.

“They _invaded_ us!” Enfys spat. She let Varko drop, just as an individual, fully covered and wearing a helmet with a face-plate, came into the cell-block, dragging a man with her.

“It’s as Lord Vader has been saying,” the masked person said, “We drew them out with a riot. The waterbender came.”

They tossed the man into her cell. “Cassian?”  
  


“You tried to pretend you were a Fire Nation official to break me out?” Enfys said slowly. They were sitting against the back of the wooden cell. He wished he had his water-skin on him to check her over, then break them out.

Cassian shrugged. “It admittedly wouldn’t be the worse plan I’ve had while in prison.”

“Ah, so this is a common thing?” she said, resting her chin on her knees. There was a faint trace of amusement in her voice. Cassian gave a short, bark of laughter. Her shoulders loosened. Still hunched over, she turned her head and looked over at him.

“I… I didn’t express myself well,” he began. Enfys waited. “I know you’re homesick. But that’s not it – it’s that you… you can’t go home anymore. The War has changed you - and it has, and it will.”

He thought of how he had tried to talk to some of his younger cousins, who would be setting out to join the fleet. There’d been little to talk about to them. All their stories felt so far away. “What was the Earth Kingdom like?” they had asked.

Cassian had never known how to explain it. Back then, he had not seen as much as he had now. The great swamplands of Lothal. The pirate fleets of Florrum. The hundreds of villages. The frenetic energy of Kafrene, where he had always wanted to lose the blood-soaked part of who he was.

“I heard there’s no water,” his cousin had continued, “Just sand everywhere.”

They live in a desert too, of ice and snow. Of course, they would not think of it that way. And now he had seen even more, the Cave of the Two Lovers, Yavin, the Holy City, Mon Cala, the glass green-sea of the Fire Nation. Its volcanic peaks, or glowing waves, or rolling fields of grass. The Seven Sisters, Jyn had traced with her fingertips. And still he wanted to know more.

It was the colour of love, and the colour of War.

It’s Jyn’s country.

But nobody who had stayed in the South Pole knew what a volcano was, or the stars above Mon Cala, or who the people that breathed fire or flew through the sky or moved mountains were.

“There’s nothing you can do about it. You’re angry, and that’s good because it wasn’t fair,” Cassian continued. “Nothing that has happened has been fair.”

“So, you’re saying we can never go home again,” and Enfys’ voice was so small.

Cassian looked over at her. “No. You have to sit with that feeling, because... even if you don’t ever go home, one day the War will spit you up and you _have_ to find what happens next. You have to carry that weight.”

“Is that why you’re helping these people? Even though they hate us?”

“Well, creating political instability in the Fire Nation, which brings a benevolent ruler to power, helps end the War.”

“Oh,” Enfys said, at a loss, “I just thought…because of Jyn…”

Cassian shook his head. Jyn was better off forgotten. He might have stupidly still loved her, looked for her in every face he saw here, but he had not done this for her.

“No, no. That wasn’t the point. You were right, in the Earth Kingdom - that you have to care. You have to. Or else what’s the point?”

The words were coming too fast, and he could not stop them. Enfys raised her head, looking at him. “What I’m _trying_ to say, it will be hard. But I had Leia, and some of my family before they died, every time I went back to the South Pole. I just didn’t see… that I could be anchored to them. I didn't see until I heard her tonight. Your mother loves you. She’ll love you even if you’ve changed. And you have your other family, this group, to help.

“And… me,” he finished, feeling increasingly embarrassed. But he needed this family to stop coming apart at the seams. He had been willing to die for them, in secrecy and shadow, kill _for_ them. But that was selfish. “After all. I’m not who I was when I was twelve, or fifteen, or twenty, or two months ago.” His throat seemed to close.

“Oh, Cassian,” she said softly, resting her hand on his shoulder. She squeezed it lightly. “You know, you’re pretty good awkward older brother.”

“Thanks?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, it was that or fatherly, and you’re only what? A decade older than me?”

“I’m twenty-seven this summer, not forty,” Cassian muttered.

“You need to get more sleep,” Enfys said critically, but she was hiding a smile. Cassian rolled his eyes, concealing his own. “I’m sorry for lashing out at you.”

“I’m sorry for…not making much sense.”

Enfys laughed. “I understand, Cassian. I really do. Now, let’s figure out how to get out.”

It was hot and sweaty in the cell. He ran the back of his hand across his forehead. Sweat drops stuck to the back of his hand, standing out against the tan. Cassian shrugged off his uniform shirt, exposing the sweat all across his arms, his back, his muscles, and his armpits. “Um, what are you doing?”

“Finding water,” he said. Leia had told him about doing this in the desert. With one hand, he bent the sweat straight off his skin. It hung in the air, sharpening into a razor’s edge.

“That’s disgusting – and brilliant!” Enfys cried. Outside, explosions were sounding. “Is that -”

“Baze. We came for you,” he said. Enfys grinned. With one sweaty slice, he cut straight through the metal. He heard the troopers yelling.

With two circular movements, Enfys sent them flying into a wall. "My side is the winning side, and you can still join us," she said to them, "They will _never_ let you be one of them. Remember that."

One of them snarled. Cassian flung the water outwards, freezing them to the wall. Enfys took his hand, and they bolted.

When they emerged from the prison, Var-Shaa was on fire. The troop presence on Var-Shaa was heavy, but the peasants and citizens had numbers. And the Generals, Admirals, had forgotten one crucial thing:

Every Stormtrooper was a citizen, too.

Enfys hated them, but she would take them choosing their people and broken bodies, over their War. They ran through the streets, dodging the continued chaos. People were throwing rocks at the Fire Nation tanks, chanting and yelling, over and over, _the few will not tell the many!_ She saw a grizzled old man leading the charge. Many of them were carrying flags. A glowing woman in white, in a veil. Cassian swallowed, gripping her hand tightly as she yanked them down another street.

There were tanks. There were dozens of people cowering. It was the market street. The market street of people who hated her. She saw the bigoted shop-keeper.

Enfys let go of Cassian. She ran forward, grabbing an old man’s staff. “Borrowing this!”

The wind was gathering around her, singing its siren song. Enfys swirled and swirled the staff, gathering the typhoon. People screamed as the clouds and screeching wind spiralled overhead. She drew the staff back.

Enfys leapt into the air, the storm at her back. She sliced.

The tanks were toppled like toys as the storm hit. Soldiers were thrown around. Weapons smashed against the walls. It was over in seconds. Enfys landed in a crouch. She looked over her shoulder at the shop-keeper.

“You…you’re an _airbender_ … Air Nomad!”

Someone slapped the shop-keeper across the face. It was the grizzled old revolutionary leader. “She’s not your enemy. She destroyed your enemy, for _you_.” He turned to her. “Garm Bel Ibis. Thank you, Enfys Nest.”

Enfys said nothing. Her eyes fell on the shop-keeper’s frightened face, then on Garm Bel Ibis’ face. She looked over at Cassian. She understood, now. Throwing down the staff, she walked away, joining her family.  
  


Later, when they had all reunited, and the Falcon was sailing away, Enfys found Luke. He was leaning against the side of the Falcon. With his good hand, he bent a stream of water to coat over the burn on his hand. She wondered if it ached like some of her old wounds, when the night was cool.

Enfys sat down against the door of the hold, patting the ground. After a moment, Luke joined her. “I don’t like this place,” Enfys said, “But I’m staying with the group.”

Luke intertwined his fingers with hers, his thumb rubbing the back of her hand. Grounding her, someone who was always looking skywards. Her skin was open, and wanting. Not now. “I…I’m so glad.”

They watched the night sky together. “You saved those people.”

“I didn’t forgive them,” she said, “I will never forgive them. They might want me to reach towards them and say ‘there is good in you, I forgive you so you do not have to live with what you did’, but I won’t. They _killed_ my people.”

Luke nodded. She swallowed, looking at him. “But I have compassion for you. For Cassian. For Jyn, Mon Mothma. Faith can help you survive, and I have faith in _this_.”

“Enfys, I…”

“When I left Mon Cala,” Enfys continued, “I met a woman who told me, it is the job of people like her, like me, all of us who have had to fight, to make a good peace.”

Luke’s expression changed, “She was going to have a child. What world will she be born into? Is it one where their land still belongs to someone else? Where they’re crushed under petty tyrants? Where slavers and crime syndicates and the gentry make them work to live? Vader had the wrong answer. But you do. I know you do.”

“I can’t kill him,” Luke whispered.

“Then the Fire Lord has already won,” she said, even though it was cruel.

“Enfys, I can’t...”

Enfys touched his cheek, turning his face to hers. “Listen. I want you to listen. When I was a child, the Fire Nation sacked Hynestia, the Western Air City. No one lives there anymore. Everyone either fled, died, or was enslaved. There are only four Air Cities, Luke. And it’s gone. My mother screamed and cried when she heard. Bespin has fallen too. When I was twelve, a firebender set my mother’s legs alight, so she would fall out of the sky. We had to amputate them both -”

Luke tried to turn his face away. She forced his face back around. “ _Listen_. Fest is gone. Jedha is gone. Corellia is a colony. Alderaan’s culture is all but destroyed. The Earth Kingdom has been conquered. You didn’t cause that, Luke. Whatever Vader did has _nothing_ to do with you, because you are a good person,” Enfys said fiercely.

“But it is your responsibility.”

Luke turned over his gloved hands. Releasing hers, he peeled off the glove to reveal the scarred and mottled flesh beneath. “I let go,” he repeated, “I… He burned me, Enfys. And there’s a part of me that wants him to suffer.”

“Cassian told me something, about anger.” Hesitantly, she touched the scarred flesh of his hand, stroking it. “And I understood. That sometimes anger is the part of you that _loves_ you, that knows what happened was wrong. And it’s not the same as Vader’s anger.”

“I never wanted it to be like this,” Luke said. The scarred hand did not twitch, even as his other hand closed.

Enfys gathered her courage, the trust in those blue eyes, that he would choose right. She kissed the scarred flesh. “I know,” she told him.  
  


Jyn tried not to fidget. She didn’t understand why Krennic had brought her here to the War Room. “The Fire Lord requested your presence,” Krennic had snapped. Another test, then.

Jyn sat stiffly beside him. The air was stifling, with braziers in front of the throne lit. Vader stood beside the Fire Lord. In the centre of the room was a large map of the world, with Fire Nation military outposts and colonies marked out. She was the only woman in the room. Jyn felt naked and humiliated, sitting beside the military men in gleaming armour. In her paranoia, she wondered if they could tell she was on her moon cycle, that Krennic would backhand her across the face for being lesser than they were. Sweat stuck her dress to her armpits.

“Mon Cala and several major cities are still under our control in the Earth Kingdom,” a general was saying. “However, continued rebellions are preventing us from gaining a pure victory. We are experiencing guerrilla warfare, hampering our campaign.”

The Fire Lord appeared to be thinking. His yellow eyes glittered beneath the hood of his robe. “Jyn Erso,” he said. She shuddered, bowing her head so as not to look him in the eye. “You travelled amongst the Earth Kingdom peasantry. You have seen the rebels up close. Tell me – how do these rebels think?”

Jyn struggled to find her voice. “The people of the Earth Kingdom are proud and stubborn. As long as they believe there is a chance, if they have hope, they will never surrender.”

“Then I think,” the Fire Lord said smoothly, “We have found an ideal target for Director Krennic’s superweapon.”

She felt ice in her veins.

“We have always planned to use the Death Star on the day the comet arrives, and gives us the power of a hundred suns… To use it as a threat against them. But the Earth Kingdom will not be cowed. Its people and cities are worthless! We will destroy the Earth Kingdom with the Death Star, and from its ashes, a new world will be born!” Palpatine roared.

The Generals began to clap. It grew in strength and thunder, as they stomped their feet and clanged the table. Baying and calling for blood. The Fire Lord raised his hands. The braziers blasted fire upwards in triumph. The room was spinning.

Jyn remembered other words being spoken, vaguely Krennic pulling her by the arm out of the meeting, remembered being taken back to the house. Somewhere, she began to dry heave onto the ground, over and over. She reached a table, crawling and pulling herself up on it, shaking. She found a goblet and began to drink, choking and sputtering. Her eyes closed, and she dreamt.  
  


The night sky is bright with a million stars.

She is standing in Mon Cala as the city glows around her. Her painted vest whips around her body. Lightning flashes overhead.

The city is empty as she walks through it, her steps making no noise on the earthen streets. The stars shine from the water pooling in the potholes.

_Stardust…_

The voice is achingly familiar. In the sky, the stars seem to grow larger.

“Don’t leave!” she yells, turning round and round frantically.

Something pale and gritty catches in her mouth. Jyn reaches forward, her fingertips sliding through the air.

Sand. The gold dust trickles onto the pavement, blowing in from the west.

_Fire-woman…_

“Where are you?” she cries. The city swallows her screams. Lightning flashes, illuminating the shattered and burnt homes. Though the Palace is miles away from her, she sees red flags fluttering at its gates.

Jyn begins to run, turning corners wildly, trying to escape the rapidly expanding stars –

Mon Cala’s streets break. Jyn plunges downwards, clawing desperately at the sand. She looks up. The night sky is near white with stars. The desert wind tears at her clothes. Footsteps.

Jyn turns.

Tana Rook stands with her back to her, her belly swollen. Three little boys run around her. One, lean and small with bright, inquisitive eyes, pauses in front of her.

Bodhi. From the first day she met him, the first of many great secrets.

He looks at her with that same, naked curiosity.

“I knew you were bad from the moment I saw you,” he says.

“I saved you,” Jyn whispers, tears leaving dusty tracks. “I saved you, please, I’m sorry -”

“I gave you something.” His family blows like wind, scattering into the sandstorms.

“What?”

“My life,” Bodhi says, “I didn’t have much to give.”

The stars are so bright. Jyn flinches away. Bodhi is gone, burnt beneath light falling from the sky.

Faces swim across the too-bright desert landscape. There is Saw, her second-sun, roaring as he holds off black-clad soldiers. Blood drips down his face, down his broken leg. Jyn has scars to match his. The sky fills with fire and smoke. Saw crumbles. His dark eyes find hers.

“I gave you teeth,” he says, even though he never should have, but it is done, and he is her father, too.

There is Galen Erso, her first-sun, taking her out to the green fields of Lah’mu, watching her with that tired smile. Galen, as he bleeds by black-clad Death Troopers and burning, in the storm of rebel firebombs.

“Stardust…” he whispers.

The light overhead is so painful. The flesh and bones of Jedha melt. Soldiers pull men and women from doorways, striking down blind men and their protectors. The oceans scream, evaporating beneath the intensity of heat. The birds fall from the sky. And something else is falling, white hot and burning.

In her arms is Liya. _I hate you._ The girl turns her bruised face towards Jyn, crumbling into stardust. She feels fire graze her skin, at last turning on her.

The man in white walks past. He does not spare a glance at her. He has more important things to do. On his face is pleasure.

Jyn screams as the golden sand turns to glass, then kyber, beneath the heat of a hundred suns. She screams and she screams as Maia, Hadder, the men and women who she served tea to in the Lower Tier of Mon Cala -

“Wake up, Jyn.”  
  


She opens her eyes.

Jyn is sitting…somewhere. Far below, she sees their planet. Her mother stands next to her, wearing her surveying gear. Fire burns through the sky, tearing a bloody path through the clouds. Jyn has seen two cities burn, has felt this heat on her skin.

“That’s the comet,” Lyra says, “It will come at the end of this long summer.”

“Mama,” she whispers, trying desperately not to touch her, “I don’t know what to do.”

“The stars are fire,” Lyra smiles gently, “You know that, don’t you?”

She nods. Lyra’s eyes are sad. “You’re grown now. You have to decide for yourself.”

“I can’t!” Jyn says, edging away like a cornered animal. “I just… I can’t…”

Lyra bends down, looking around conspiratorially. “I’ll give you a hint, okay?”

Jyn gives a tiny nod.

“The sun is also a star,” Lyra tells her. Jyn swallowed, looking into her mother’s face.

“I miss you, Mama. I miss you every day.” She is so small, eight-years-old again. There is a hole in Lyra’s chest. “I wish we had all died together.”

“ _Never_ say that,” Lyra says. She kisses Jyn’s cheeks, her forehead, her eye-lids, dripping tears into the red sky. “I was trying to give you time to run, but I should have seen you were just a child, and you needed me.”

“Sacrifice,” Jyn whispers.

The apology burns her skin. The tears fall, forming a bridge of shimmering stars pointing into the distance. Lyra’s fingers trace Jyn’s neck. “I had to let it go,” Jyn whispers. “The ocean took it away.”

Lyra’s voice is soft, so soft Jyn can barely hear it. “The strongest stars have hearts of kyber.”

Beneath the bridge is a sea of a thousand pin-pricks. Jyn begins to walk forward, until her body is consumed.  
  


Then the dream was over, and Jyn was lying across the table in the house that once belonged to Galen Erso. She wept, harder than she ever had – weeping until her head and chest ached, weeping until her whole body seemed to fill with light. She wept for Lah’mu, Jedha, Eadu, Mon Cala, until there were no more tears left.

She began to pack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) The conscripts mentioned (Varko, etc.) come from the new Squadrons game. I have mixed feelings on how Disney has made the Empire more "diverse", but I think it does make sense in this fic for some people to collude with the occupying force (and I just like the game aesthetic). Also fun trivia: I constantly pronounce Iden's name as "Ee-den" and not the correct "EYE-den"...I'll never get English pronounciation. 
> 
> We are one chapter from the Day of Black Sun! But before that, next chapter...if you know, you know: BLOODBENDING.


	36. Book Three: Rebirth VII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It really irritates me that there are basically zero Latina characters in prominent roles in Star Wars, which is why I've used the characters I have. Anyways, this chapter is basically 'Cassian Alone', because he deserves a solo chapter!
> 
> As a reminder, Cassian's sisters are named Ysabel and Juana in this fic.
> 
> Content warning: prisoners of war, racism, imperialism

He is dreaming, he knew. _Wake up,_ he tried to tell himself, _wake up, they’ve gotten you, you need to escape, you need to get back –_

He continued to walk forward, wearing the white and blue furred ponchos, the seal-skin embroidered jackets, the tassels of his _chullo_ bouncing. How small his feet looked. His mitted hands were a child’s hands. Cassian looked over Fest, the small stepped pyramids of ice, the tents and long houses and canals.

Black snow was falling.

Four projectiles smashed into the outer walls. People began to run. Cassian dashed up the steps of the wall, made of compacted ice and snow and wood. Five metal ships – metal ships! – were landing on their shores. Armoured men riding on hideous black animals marched forward, fire pouring from their hands.

Another fireball impacted Fest. The whole city shook. People were screaming, he saw their tribal elders yelling orders as warriors ran out, armed to the teeth. A fireball hit a building in the city. One of the pyramids shattered open. Tents burnt. People ran, furs on fire. The firebenders laughed, uncaring if they burnt cloth or food or the living. Wood snapped and burnt gladly, betraying them.

Waterbenders began to fight, pulling up waves and spearing open enemies. The _conquistadors_ were armed with metal nets, hunting their prey. The sky overhead was red with hundreds of fireballs. The phalanx of waterbenders bent cliffs of ice, catching the fireballs, but there were too many. They skated on slopes of water, dodging and parrying their enemies’ blows in an icy dance. Mines of animal fat and blasting jelly exploded, compacted deep into the ice.

But the charge continued. The fire was spreading. The walls weren’t going to hold.

The phalanx of waterbenders raised their arms, filling the city with mist. A waterbender knew that strength could not always meet strength. A waterbender turned their enemy’s power against them.

Now there was only horror. The flames of the firebenders were ghostly yellow lights in the mist. They screamed as concealed waterbenders leapt from the shadows of burning buildings, crushing and slicing them open like rotted fruit. Warriors charged on with spears, clubs, and knives, breaking through their metal armour as best they could. Cassian leapt down from the wall. A firebender charged him.

Unthinking, Cassian bent an ice dagger. It cut the man’s throat open to the bone. A kind of savage pride rose in him. Who could doubt the strength, the courage of the Southern Water Tribe? They had stood tall and proud for generations, even as the other nations scorned them and poached their waters. Every woman and man here was a fighter to the end.

How loud the screaming was.

(How old was he when Fest had fallen? Older than six…older than that, he must have been…)

The phalanx of waterbenders continued to bend, raising up that horrible black ship that will haunt Fest’s shores for another decade. But the metal nets found them too, dragging the waterbenders aboard the ships, kicking and screaming. Those that did not come quietly were killed. Tongues of red-gold flame surged over the city, melting through their pyramids and shrines and tents. Where the market-place had once stood was only ash.

And still the Fire Nation marched on, wounded and crippled, but stronger than they were. No. How could all that proud defiance be reduced to this, a footnote in the terrible story that was the War?

He felt arms seize his middle. It was his mother, looking a thousand years old. “Get your things! They’re going to take the city, we must go!”

“Mamá?” he gasps.

“Your sisters are waiting in the house! Hurry!”

The snow of Fest was black and red. And the house is empty. “Where are Ysabel and Juana?” she demands. “Where are your sisters?”

There was a crack as the Fire Nation began to break through. “ _NO!”_

How could a person make a noise like that?

This was only a dream, but perhaps there was truth in it. Perhaps he had grabbed his mother’s wailing body and heaved it onto his back. Had taken what little he could carry. Thrown them onto their neighbour’s arctic camel, joining the column of elderly, children, and families fleeing. He remembered they had gotten here, somehow.

The whole of Fest was on fire. He held his broken mother to his chest, breaking open himself. He was boneless and weeping, breathing shallowly.

(Later, much later, he would return to what remained of Fest. Find two small bodies, burnt and blackened. With shaking fingers, he had cut a piece of their hair, wrapping it carefully.

“Wake up,” he whispered, “Wake up.”)  
  


Cassian shot awake, nearly cracking his head open on the metal. It took him a moment to recall himself. A prison. They’d gotten him at last.

Cassian clenched and unclenched his fists around the bars of the cage. He had been captured by high-ranking soldiers, pulling him away from his friends during one of the riots. After Var-Shaa, they had tried to be careful, knowing the Fire Nation was hunting down a waterbender.

But they’d needed to get food. Enfys, Chirrut, and Baze were in too much danger so close to Coruscant. Luke and Leia had to stay out of sight.

There was something almost cruel that the very riots he’d helped orchestrate had gone off when he and Han had been in the marketplace. By then, it was too late for him to do anything.

Two _qi_ -blocks and he’d gone limp, easily taken into their custody.

Now he was on some unbearably hot Fire Nation island, in some kind of prison complex. He was in a cage suspended above the ground. Multiple other cages hung in the large space, but they all seemed empty. The air was dry, with a nauseating smell to it. From a slit above Cassian could see the night sky, where a fat waxing gibbous Moon hung. The energy thrummed in his veins, but there was no water he could sense to bend. He flexed his hands. He knew to bend the sweat from his body, but it wasn’t humid enough. The swampbenders had found a way to manipulate the water in plants. There was water in the air, if he could only…

“Don’t bother.”

Cassian tensed, glancing over. A middle-aged woman with dark skin and tightly braided hair, bound back, peeled out of the shadows of one of the cages. “Lola Sayu, this island, is full of sulphur. And they’re pumping dry air in. Only one person ever escaped the Citadel, and they had help. There’s nothing here for you to bend.”

Her clothes were dull Earth Kingdom tunic and trousers, but taking in her face, the braiding of her hair … “You’re Water Tribe,” he said, sitting back on his heels.

“So are you.”

Before they could continue, guards stepped into the room. Marching over to the two cages, they flung out chains that secured their hands and ankles. Their arms were pulled upwards and backwards, as well as their legs. Then, more guards came into the room, with buckets of water. Using a long wooden ladle, they extended the water into the cage. One hit Cassian’s face. He grimaced, wanted to sink his teeth into the man’s hands.

On his knees like an animal, Cassian drank.

Once the water was removed from the room, the guards unbound them. Something turned over in his mind… this prison, its design… “You’re a waterbender,” he said, searching for a miracle, in the woman’s tired, drawn face.  
  


He was a thin, whip-cord child, standing in his furs before Chief Organa, Davits Draven, and other elders. Several boys and girls stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him, waiting. Every time more of the Southern Fleet left, this ceremony was conducted. Asking the Spirits for guidance.

Cassian had nothing to ask from the Spirits. They had stolen two little girls from the world. They had taken his father, his kind, peaceful father. The shaman sang, her voice a high-reedy sound piercing through the winter morning. She will die two winters later, killed in another raid.

Chief Organa stood before each one of them, holding a bowl of paint in one hand. When she reached him, she looked at him directly. Her brown eyes were warm and gentle, the crow’s feet around them telling of a woman who smiled easily. There was little cause for smiling now.

“Our waterbender,” she said, “For Cassian Jeron Andor, I grant you the Mark of the Brave.”

Her thumb scrubbed over his forehead. “Your courage inspires us all.”

Courage? Was it courage that kept him moving? In Ord Mantell, he was Willix. As Assistant to Admiral Grendreef, he was Joreth Sward. He even, in some strange joke of the Spirits, used the name ‘Aach’ in Darknell, never knowing it was the name of some minor Fire Nation Spirit that would one day spark a revolution.

_You are a shark,_ the water whispered to him, _A hunter. Take the shark's patience. One day there will be blood in the water. And when it comes, be cold, and indifferent, and the water will obey._

“We are brave,” Cassian repeated to himself, watching as the Earth Kingdom rebel bled into his boots. The man had been a weak link in the mission. What was his name?

What was his name?  
  


The woman refused to speak as Cassian paced the borders of his cell. He slept uneasily, groaning into consciousness sometime in the late morning. Food had been left out for him. It tasted disgusting in his dry mouth, but he swallowed it, all the same. Anything to give him some sense of what to do.

Finally, the woman spoke. “When you were asleep, they talked about summoning Vader. Who are you?”

Cassian nearly vomited. Vader would remember him, from the day his children died. “I used to travel with the Avatar,” Cassian said, trying to think. “I’m a waterbender from the Southern Tribe…like you. I didn’t think there were any others.”

In the darkness of his dreams, ever since he was a child, he had hoped that maybe, maybe…

Something to make it worthwhile. So, it was not him, carrying it all. Instead there was only this horrific prison, and this beaten-down woman. “There are no more Southern waterbenders,” the woman said.

He looked at her now, really looked. Her energy was sluggish. She sat as a sick, gaping hole in the energy of the world. Under the Moonlight, he had thought himself alone.

“You can’t bend anymore,” he whispered. “How long have you been here?”

In his mind’s eye, he could feel the heat of the Fire Nation siege weapons, as the Tribe burnt. The nets that grabbed waterbenders and took them away. That wretched ship on the shores of Fest. Sometimes, it was a miracle that his father had died protesting against the exploitation of the Water Tribe by the Earth Kingdom traders and sailors, rather than see what they had become.

This was the legacy of the Southern Water Tribe, of Fest.

“Not so long,” she said, looking down at her hands. “When they began to take us away in chains, I fled with some of the children. Made a new life for myself in the Earth Kingdom. I’m here in exchange for a young man I was helping… someone who was part of…an organization I used to serve.”

“Jedi.” At her surprise, he elaborated coolly, “I’ve met a few. Some adults survived.”

Some of the bitterness seemed to melt off her face. “I never thought… My name is Cere Junda.”

“Cassian Andor,” he said. His identity no longer mattered. Vader was coming. He had no means to escape. It was over, at last. He would never see his friends again, his home.

He would never see Jyn one last time.

“I’m sorry for your loss. I lost my family in the raids.”

She said nothing, but her expression softened. “So now there are two surviving Southern waterbenders,” he continued, “You’ll be welcomed by the Tribe as a hero.”

Something flickered over her face for a moment. Cassian paused. The pieces of her story were beginning to coalesce in his head. “Yes,” she murmured, “Two. I never thought I would meet another.”

He has nothing to lose. “Would you teach me?”

Cere glanced up very sharply. “What?”

“Teach me the Southern tradition. Our heritage… I would do anything to learn what was taken from us.”

He was the last, now, truly. A living cultural treasure. With this death would come the end of the Southern waterbending, forever. He near doubled over at that thought. _Ysabel. Juana. Mother, father, Leia._

I failed.

Cere’s face shuttered. “I cannot teach you anything. Do not ask me again.”

“What did you do that severed your Spiritual connection?” Cassian asked. Cere said nothing. “What happened to the Water Tribe children you took with you? _Who did you sell them to?”_

But Cere would say no more.  
  


“We cannot make him a soldier! He is too young!” Bail Organa insisted. Cassian sat stiffly in his best clothes, digging his fingers into his trousers. His mother sat next to him, worrying her hands over and over. Council members murmured and spoke amongst themselves.

“We send those as young as he into battle already,” one old man said.

Chief Organa looked pained by this. The Chief was soft-hearted. Only as an adult did Cassian understand the wisdom of her position. "And we should never have decided on that. Children should not be fighting our wars!"

"Times are desperate. Our numbers are small already."

“He is a young waterbender,” another elder said, “If he dies…”

Davits Draven stabbed a furious finger. “We need him in the field as a waterbender. His skills, rudimentary as they are, suit our needs. More than that, he is fair enough to their eyes that they would accept him as one of their own, or a mixed-blood.”

His mother’s hand was squeezing his like a vice.

“I’ve already been fighting,” Cassian said in a low voice, “I was there at Carida. With my father. I want to fight, Chief Organa.”

Many of the Alderaani shifted uncomfortably. They had wanted to negotiate, to work together with the old Alliance of Four Nations, while the Earth Kingdom had been bleeding Fest into the sea. How sweet that War had finally awoken them to the need to fight, to defend themselves. “I know you do, Cassian. What is your wisdom, Master Olin?” Chief Organa asked.

Ferus Olin was one of the still-surviving waterbenders. He would die before he could truly teach Cassian anything. But he taught him enough. The man was paunchy, with a bulging belly. But his dark eyes were sharp and intelligent.

“If he stays here, he may die in the next raid. If he goes to the front, he'll die too. But he could survive,” Olin said to the gathering, “If he became nobody. A spy.”

He nodded towards Cassian. “As I’ve taught the boy, where there is water, there is life. And where there is life, there is hope.”

“A spy is not a symbol of hope,” Bail Organa snorted.

“No, but the Fire Nation is intractable. Cassian, what does water do to an object that will not move?”

Cassian started. Clearing his throat, he said, “It could wear down the object, given enough time. Or it finds a new path. Eventually, all water must reach the ocean.”

“Very good. And how does that help us in combat?”

“Waterbending is both offensive and defensive. It relies upon redirecting the energy of an opponent’s attack against them. A master must always change direction and move with the water. A master knows to use all available water as a weapon.”

Olin turned back to the gathering. “You see.”

Chief Organa slumped. What was a choice, when all the choices had been made for you by powers outside? They were losing the War. They were a dying people. "So be it."

It was decided then. _Where there is water, there is life, and where there is life, there is hope,_ he thought, as he boarded the ship towards the Earth Kingdom.

He had killed his first man at six years old. _Where there is life, there is water._  
  


On the third day, Cassian woke unwillingly to the sounds of the guards coming for their morning water. There was anticipation in the air. “Vader is travelling,” they whispered to each other as they restrained them. And a word, over and over.

Inquisitor.

“What are Inquisitors?” Cassian asked Cere, once the guards were gone and they were alone to eat. Her face had gone rigid at the guards’ murmurings. In her hands was a mouldy peach. As he watched, with great difficulty, she began to bend.

Water bloomed in the air, peeling off the peach skin in fat clumps. The fruit withered in her hands. Then the bending failed. Water splashed onto the floor of the cage. “Water exists everywhere,” Cere said quietly, “Even in the air. A true master waterbender keeps an open mind…searching for water you’d never think to look.”

It was an incredible trick. One Cassian had never thought of. Yet Cere only appeared revolted in herself.

She looked up at him. “The Inquisitors are elite benders that are loyal only to the Fire Lord. They are tasked with hunting down elite benders that could turn the tide of the War…like the Jedi were.”

Cassian turned over her phrasing in his mind. “How did you find out about them?”

Cere shuddered, briefly. “I was captured after I left the South Pole. They tortured me.” She pulled up her sleeve, revealing a horrifying mesh of burns. “I was able to escape with my life, under the power of the full Moon.”

His mind raced. “And the children?”

“Dead. My niece Trilla, I taught her like my own,” Cere stopped abruptly, her dark eyes flashing. “Enough of this topic, Andor.”

“You think you’re the only monster made by this War?” Cassian hissed, getting to his feet. “I want to know how you escaped, in a place with no water.”

“Maybe I had help,” Cere said. Her guilt tasted as sour as the sickly air.

“I don’t think you did. I think you found water…” Cassian paused. _Water exists everywhere._ “No. _No_. That’s not…”

“You know what it is, already, don’t you?” Cere said, fisting her hands around the bars. “You know, and you’re afraid. Suddenly you don’t want to get out any more.”

He could feel his blood pounding in his veins. Could feel the blood in Cere’s body, turned towards him. Unbidden, he covered his ears with his hands. But the pounding was so loud. Cere’s eyes were sad. “You’re very talented, aren’t you?” she said, “You’ve figured it out without me even needing to show you how. And once you do – you can never stop hearing it, feeling it.”

He did not know if it were he or Cere he hated more. He had carried guilt since Eadu, and he wanted to put it somewhere, to shake it off. He’d thought…

What a stupid joke, that he could have a life after the War.

“It’s easy to be the Avatar. The dashing heroes. The great commanders and noble warriors. But nobody talks about all of us,” he spat, “Those of us who have to do anything to survive. The people who have to send in children, who have to make the calls. Do you know what I’ve _done_ to win this War? Do you know what rebels I’ve betrayed because it was for the greater good? And now you tell me -”

_Water exists everywhere._ The Full Moon was tomorrow night.

“The world’s broken,” Cere said. The water pooled on her cell floor trembled, spiking and freezing as she grabbed the cell bars. “It was broken long ago. There are no more Southern waterbenders. We all end up here.”

Cassian turned and faced away. His hands shook. Southern style waterbending had been designed for a world of ice and snow and oceans.

This was not a technique from that world. That world had been lost. He held his own mouldy peach, and bent, and watched it wither.  
  


A very long, long time ago, Cassian remembered being a small child clutching tight to his father’s hand on the island of Carida, a little off Fest’s shore. People were chanting, carrying Water Tribe flags, walking in peaceful lines.

The Earth King had allowed his ships to poach the waters of Fest for generations. Increasingly sending military ships to patrol the waters these Kings and diplomats and bureaucrats and wealthy believed belonged to them.

Cassian remembered throwing rocks, braining a man straight between the eyes. He remembered carrying messages to the Separatists, who gave them promises of a land that belonged to the Water Tribe alone, that they would never again have to fight for their right to survive. He remembered seeing little kids dead in the streets. No wonder there were so few Southern Waterbenders. They’d been killed long ago.

He remembered his father dying in a haze of arrows, his body pricked a thousand times even after his heart had already stopped. His father had come with his hands open, and they had killed him, all the same.

The Fire Nation was just the end-point of that mercilessness. And what would happen when the War ended? Would the Earth Kingdom come back, and take what it felt it was owed, just as it had taken and taken and taken from its poorest?

_Things could never go back to normal_ , he had said once.

Sometimes Cassian didn’t think he wanted to die, if only because he did not know if his anger would go there too.

To think he will die knowing he changed an entire Nation of people who despised him. It had been bloody and brutal, made from a thousand hands of people clamouring towards the sky, begging for food, for mercy, to be treated as people, fired upon by their kings and governors.

But freedom always had a high cost.  
  


The next time the guards came, they brought chains and food. Cassian hissed as they snapped his arms and legs back, forcing him and Cere onto their knees. The manacles dug into the flesh of his wrists and ankles, leaving a deep cut. If he didn’t heal it soon, it would get infected.

Cassian didn’t want to imagine how his kin had died here, slowly sickening, unable to call their element to them to help.

“You two have been waterbending,” one of the guards clucked, “Naughty.”

They tossed a bowl of gruel into each of their cells. Cassian lifted his head as best he could. With his body twisted, his entire spine felt like it was being ripped in two. “How did you expect us to eat?”

The guards laughed. “You’ve a mouth. Figure it out.”

Cassian bared his teeth. Biting back his pride, he bent forward. On his knees, Cassian choked down the food, feeling it smear against his cheeks and chest. The bowl skittered away from him. He was forced to grab it with his teeth, trying to get as much gruel into his mouth as possible. He heard Cere struggling as well. One day you will be sick, he thought angrily. One day you will be sick, and you will wish for a waterbender. But you killed us all. 

“Good dogs,” one of the guards said.

_There’s water everywhere._ Cassian burnt with humiliation. A waterbender found a path. Waited like the glaciers, until the moment the enemy could be turned against itself. The swampbenders had made tree branches move, bending the water inside…  
  


Vader watched the young Water Tribe man help a limping older woman, as they stumbled out from the prison block. The men in the Citadel had told him that the older woman was a criminal to her Tribe. She had abandoned them in order to survive. Vader would expect contempt, disgust from the ocean-man.

And yet he reared upwards when the guards try to hit her to walk faster, keeping an arm tightly around her.

The water that surrounded the Citadel was toxic. His hands and feet were bound. No water in the air; it hadn’t rained lately.

As a young boy, his mother had told him stories about the magic of the other benders. Earthbenders who could raise mountains to scrape the sky, airbenders who spoke the music in the wind, waterbenders who could run across the sea as though it were glass. Vader knew it was a lie, a fairy story – weren’t they all?

And yet.

Once, after Sidious had revealed his true, nightmarish form, he had taken Vader to Lola Sayu, to see the captured Water Tribe prisoners.

_Tell them how magical they are,_ Sidious had laughed, as they flinched and cowered into the shadows. Tan and dark-skinned people, thin and emancipated in their dull brown clothes. In the cages, they looked more beast than human. _Your water people. Your magical friends._

This ocean man’s face carried a kind of quiet dignity despite his looming death. Not the bravery of idiots or the hopelessness of broken men. He knew what Vader was. He had eyes like Padmé’s, bright and clear and righteous.

_He’ll always be better than you,_ Erso had said.

And Vader could understand.

Understand how she, and his children, could love the ocean-man so.  
  


Jyn was bending her fire serpent lazily on the courtyard floor. Cassian threaded his fingers through the fountain water, throwing up small waves. Days were passing, and still Thrawn did not respond to their message. “I hate waiting,” Jyn murmured.

“Be patient,” Cassian said. In a quieter voice, he continued, “The Earth King is an awful man.”

Jyn rolled over on her stomach. “Then why are you so pissy about Leia and Enfys helping with the Worker’s Movement in Mon Cala?”

“I’m not ‘pissy’,” he said, freezing the fountain water momentarily, “I have a mission.”

Jyn waited. She had a way of looking at him that made him feel guilty for his secrecy. Finally, “I want to help them. I want to be there. I want to bring the Upper Tier crashing down.”

“But?”

He sent a wave into the fountain spigot. “But I have to do as I’m ordered.”

Jyn frowned, but didn’t say anything. They lay there in the courtyard, watching the sky. She continued her bending. Cassian watched. “It’s beautiful,” he said.

She snorted. “It’s firebending.”

“My father used to say that it’s hard, living in the South Pole. The ocean is very hungry. You have to choose what you give it, and what you let it take.”

“And what did you give it? Your life?” Jyn asked.

Cassian couldn’t answer.  
  


It was nearing twilight when they were taken out from their cells, chained at the hands and feet. “Vader and Second Sister will see you now,” a guard laughed.

They were taken out onto a wide metal platform, some kind of supplying area. Cassian could see the Citadel now: a stone tower rising out of the craggy rock. Fire burnt at its top. A heavily fortified wall rose around them. All around the platform were sulphur pools, belching yellow gas and foul stench. The air here was blessedly cooler than inside, but it was still hot and sticky, like every part of the Fire Nation.

In the rising full Moon, Cassian could feel the ocean close by. Vader was arrogant. He had believed he could turn his children over to him. Cassian shoved aside that thought. He did not want to think of Luke’s fondness for a madman.

He had sacrificed too much to believe Luke would let them down.

Standing on the platform was Vader. A second figure, wearing an all-black suit, with armoured shoulders and forearms, stood a bit in front of him. Second Sister. A long cape fluttered behind her. Her face was covered by black metal helmet, from which only the glitter of dark eyes could be seen. Cere staggered. “You? He brought you?”

“Yes,” Second Sister said.

Cassian did not wait. He lifted his chained hands and squeezed.

His arms were yanked in front of him, sending him crashing face first into the platform. He bit back a curse as his limbs spasmed, pulled by some horrible hand. One of his shoulders popped. He screamed, the blood in his veins twisting like a snake.

“Trilla, stop!”

Cassian found enough strength to look up. Second Sister had extended her gloved hands, fingers bent like horrible claws. Cere’s face was ashen, lips pulled back into a snarl, eyes wet. A flash of sickening clarity. Inquisitors are elite _benders_ …

_Two. Two. **Two**._

“Your niece…she joined the Fire Nation?” Cassian bit out, trying to control his limbs. “Why? They wiped out our culture, our families, our home! _How could you?_ ”

Almost lazily, Trilla lifted one hand and unclipped her helmet.

There was something wrong to Cassian, to see a brown-skinned woman beneath. Her black hair was cut short. Heavy eye bags made her eyes look sunken. She was his age, maybe only a few years off. She tossed the helmet aside. Her hands lashed outwards, whip-like. His arms were yanked forward, near dislocating both shoulders.

“Betrayal?” she snarled. Her body was tense and rigid as she focused, moving her hands like claws. Cere fell to the ground, screaming like a wounded animal. “Tell him, Auntie, where I learnt to bloodbend! Tell him what you gave the Fire Nation!”

“I told them,” Cere choked out, “I told them where the children were. They took - They tortured them - I was too weak - please, Trilla, please – _I’m so sorry!_ ”

“You bloodbent me to escape!” Trilla cried. Cassian’s body bent unnaturally almost rising up off the platform. He tasted blood as he fought desperately. “You left me there! In the prison where they kept our brothers and sisters! They tortured us! They made us eat and drink on our _knees_ , food dripping down our faces like we were animals! I was the most powerful waterbender of my year, held like a rat!”

“And you still joined them…” Cassian gasped out, seeing stars in his vision.

The pain was excruciating, as Trilla turned her dark eyes on Cassian. Her voice shook. “I _survived_. There is no hope for the South. Better to live as a slave than die with honour. We have to live however we can, by any means necessary!”

Cassian managed to raise his head. “So, you don’t think, either,” he hissed, “There will be any more Southern waterbenders.”

And in those dark eyes, and Cere’s too, he saw his own despair. Blood, and grief, and suffering, and hate, leaving them shells fighting for their own right to live and think. The three last Southern waterbenders alive in the world, trying to murder one another.

“There is no more Southern waterbending. _This_ is the legacy of the Southern Water Tribe. _This_ is your heritage! We all end up here.”

Monster. All he had ever wanted was to not be alone in this world.

“Enough of this melodrama.” Vader raised a hand. A bolt of fire stung Cassian’s cheek. He heard a pained sound, a choked scream. Cassian managed to turn his head. Cere had fallen, her chest smoking.

“I am sorry, Trilla,” Cere gasped, “I am sorry…the pain was too great…”

He saw Trilla wobble. She stilled as Vader strode forward. He gestured towards Cassian. “Stand that one up.”

Hissing, Cassian felt his legs bend oddly. Like a marionette, he was forced upwards. Inch by inch, his spine curved and straightened. Stop, he told his body. Stop. “It hurts more to resist,” Trilla said, her voice brittle, “Every muscle, every vein, I control.”

She looked like his mother. The same brown skin, the same wide eyes. She wore the garb of the Fire Nation, but she was a child of the Moon. She knew to survive.

But Cassian was not a tiger-shark. No one in the Tribe ought to be. No more.

Vader’s gloved hand seized Cassian’s chin. He looked up. Through the red film over the helmet’s eyeholes, he saw…blue. Human. Like him. “You travelled with the Avatar,” Vader said, “Why have you come here, now?”

“The Rebellion will never die,” Cassian said. Vader back-handed him across the face, splitting his lip open.

“Who are the revolutionaries in the Fire Nation? What is their goal?”

Overhead, the Moon thrummed. Perhaps, in another lifetime, he and Trilla and Cere would’ve bent great shimmering waves on an icy tundra. But the dream was dead.

The work would carry on.

It would be different. It had to be. The world had been broken. The Fire Nation’s elite was falling. Soon, the Earth Kingdom would too. Cassian lifted his chin. Vader’s blood sang beneath the full Moon. “Don’t you get it?” Cassian laughed, “You made them. They’re all of us. Every last one you poached from and beat and filled with arrows. I’m not the revolution, Lord Vader. It’s bigger than any of us.”

Vader hissed. “This defiant breath will be your last.”

“No, Lord Vader. My work has only just begun,” Cassian said, and _bent_.

Vader’s arm dropped. His body began to spasm.

It was all in the finger motions. Luke and Leia would never be able to achieve it with their crippled hands. He was glad for that.

With one swift strike, Cassian slammed Vader’s head into the platform. The Dark Lord of Fire lay still, momentarily stunned. He could feel the water thumping in Vader’s veins.

No time. Cassian heard Trilla move. On her face was blind panic. Exhaling, he froze his cuffs. They shattered. He bent sickly yellow-green water from the lake, blocking her strike. With another water slice, he cut his ankle cuffs. Trilla was a master, but she could not bloodbend him. Not anymore. She peeled two sickly bullets of water from the lake, sending them towards him.

Cassian snapped his hands forward. The torrent of water _stopped_.

Water exploded away from him in a huge dome, cresting away from where his hands had struck the torrent dead. Trilla gaped. He could feel every droplet around him, glittering and pulsing in the air. He had healed the Moon. He had brought the Avatar back from the dead.

Cassian threw Trilla backwards across the platform with two jets of water.

Two bodies lay on the platform.

Cassian ran to Cere’s body. He touched her. Water, flowing through her veins. Alive, but only just. Cassian heard Trilla come up beside him. She did nothing to stop him. She bent a wave of water, knocking the guards aside. The _qi_ -blockers surged forward, but Cassian froze them in place. “Try blocking my _qi_ now,” he said viciously.

Trilla’s black eyes were glassy, as Vader began to rise. “Auntie,” she whispered, “Auntie…”

Cassian placed his hand over Cere’s chest. After a moment, Trilla’s hand joined his. _Where there is water, there is life, and where there is life, there is hope._ The ocean gave, and the ocean took, but it mattered what you chose.

_I am my mother’s son, my father’s son, my sister’s brother,_ he thought, and twisted his fingers.

Cassian felt Cere’s heart convulse, spasming horribly as he forced it to beat. Once, twice, and then – she gasped. Her eyes fluttered. “Andor…how…”

“We bloodbent your heart,” he said, and dragged her to her feet.

Vader was standing. He had waved a dismissive hand at Trilla. The guards surged forward. Cassian grabbed Cere, pulling her away, as Trilla raised her arms to stop them. “Go! Go now!”

“Imprison the waterbender failure. Torture her for what other betrayals she has committed. She is worthless to us otherwise.”

Guards seized Trilla’s arms. She looked at them. “Avenge us,” she breathed.

“I’m coming back for you,” Cassian said, even though he knew it was a fool’s hope, “When the War is won, I will free you, and return you to the Tribe for our own justice.”

He and Cere began to run, as Vader blasted fire in their direction. Cassian bent a huge wave of sulphurous water, coasting him and Cere over the wall. Skin burning, they raced towards the shore and seized a boat.

Cassian bent them away from the island, just as Vader slammed down onto the earth. He had jetted himself over the wall with fire. The Lord of Fire watched them escape, cape flapping in the wind.  
  


When Lola Sayu and the Citadel were far away, Cassian bent cool water from the ocean onto his and Cere’s skin. Slowly, the wounds began to close under the glow of his bending water. “You’re a talented healer,” Cere observed, coughing as he made the burn on her chest disappear.

Cassian held that title, measured it against his own actions. “Maybe so.”

The older woman studied his face. “I suppose that wasn’t what they asked of you. They wanted you to be a tiger-shark.”

“And what should I be?”

Her face grew dreamy. “A long time ago, there was a tradition. They called the people’s champion the Sea-Wolf. The Sea-Wolf lives in pods, communities of other black-and-white whales, teaching their young, singing to them, healing their sick and fighting for their lives. They are the greatest treasure of the Southern Water Tribe.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Cassian said. He moved his hands, searching out the broken blood vessels. He wound webs of blood, healing the internal bleeding, vein by vein.

Cere’s expression was sad. “That’s because it was me. I deserted. I tried to find new children, with a young man…but it was the wrong time. I was the wrong person. I’m a bloodbender.” She touched his face gently.

“You’re a bloodbender now, too,” she whispered.

He was the last free Southern waterbender. Slowly, he knitted Cere Junda back together.

“I can carry that weight,” Cassian told her.


	37. Book Three: Rebirth VIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, how long I have waited to get to this point in the narrative. 
> 
> This chapter's musical theme is without doubt [Jyn Erso and Hope Suite](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w42CTq5QZtI).

Iden stood stiff-backed in her father’s study, fully kitted out in her black uniform and armour. She could feel the cool press of her hidden blades scattered across her body. Iden forced herself not to fidget next to the other intelligence operative, a cruel-faced man named Hask. Her father had been cold since her return from the Earth Kingdom and her embarrassing re-assignment as Jyn’s jailor.

“You couldn’t even kill Gerrera!” Inspector General Versio had said.

Iden remembered a ruthless man with kind and tired eyes, who spoke sometimes, in quiet trust of her and other high-level Partisans, of an older sister he had feuded with until she had left, that he dreamed every night of finding again. Of a bright island called Onderon that had been occupied for generations, of fighting by any means necessary, because the enemy would exterminate you otherwise, as they had done to his people.

Of a little girl he had abandoned, to keep safe, who grew up to be obnoxious, charming, idiotic, good Jyn Erso.

Iden gritted her teeth and focused on listening. Outside, riots were breaking out across the Fire Nation. They were marching through Coruscant, as soldiers tried to fend them off. A messenger in a red robe stood beside Inspector General Versio. Her father addressed them. “A solar eclipse is occurring today. During that time, every firebender will be left powerless. The rebels have chosen today as their opportunity to invade, hoping to land a final, devastating strike.”

Jyn hadn’t said anything about that. _And what would you have done, Versio? Tattle to daddy?_ “So, what happens now?” she said.

Instead of answering, her father changed tack. “Tell me, Iden, what is the source of the Rebels' belief?”

“Hope,” she said, almost spitting the word.

Nodding approvingly, her father gestured to the messenger. Its voice was a low rasp, male and elderly. It spoke as though it were delivering a pre-written speech. “Resistance. Rebellion. Defiance. These are concepts that cannot be allowed to persist.” Outside, Iden could hear people shouting. “Today, these ideas shall be burnt away through Operation: Cinder.”

The cool press of her knives felt like ice against her skin.

“Your assignment, Commander Versio,” her father continued, “Is to extract the Protectorate Gleb in our home of the Vardos District.”

“You’re going to bomb Vardos?” Iden said, her voice rising in pitch. Her father’s eyes flicked away from her face. Increasingly, more and more servicemen were being re-assigned to a classified operation, Ciena had told her. With a sick clarity, Iden understood. _“The Death Star?”_

“Vardos and other surrounding districts,” he said tightly.

“Why?” she demanded. “Vardos, Nacronis, Burnin’ Konn, all those people – they’re loyal to the Fire Nation!”

His eyes narrowed. She could hear protestors chanting. “The Fire Lord commands it. Fear shall spread and all will remember who is in control.”

“This is our home!” she yelled.

“The Fire Nation is our home! And we will do as the Fire Lord commands.”

It was never my home, Iden thought, a piercing thought, they tossed Mama aside even when she painted their propaganda and championed their war. She spread her hands, knowing her chain of command. “I don’t take orders from the Fire Lord.”

Her father lunged towards her, his face nearly puce. “You take orders from _me_!” He drew back, shuttering his expressions. “You will retrieve Protectorate Gleb. That is your only target. That is all.”

When Iden didn’t move, he said, voice cold, “That. Is. All.”

Iden glared at him. Her father: a pale, doughy face, weak eyes, and a crisp white uniform. She turned and followed the other intelligence operative, Hask. They began to push their way through the protesters towards their komodo-rhino mounts.

Hask never saw it coming.

Iden’s hand twitched. A knife slid through her fingers, embedding itself in Hask’s throat. As his body fell, Iden swung herself onto her mount. “Get out of the way!” she yelled, as the komodo-rhino reared up, “Go back to your homes!”

The beast charged down towards the harbour, as people screamed and dodged. She needed to find Ciena, and Jyn.  
  


The Day of the Invasion dawned bright and hot. At daybreak, the group began to prepare. Cassian and Han were poring over maps of the Fire Nation. Cassian scrubbed at his eyes. He’d only reunited with them a day ago, coming with a small group aboard the ship _Stinger Mantis_. Enfys filled two cups with water, and forced Cassian to drink and eat. He accepted it gratefully, offering her a wan smile. Luke and Leia finally rose, looking well-rested. They still seemed a bit uneasy, not speaking to each other.

Enfys bit her lip and hoped that nothing would come of that. The obsession with fathers to her was utterly bizarre. She gazed out at the horizon. Huge white clouds were gathering. “Is that going to affect the invasion?” she asked Cassian.

He shook his head, giving her a slight smile. “No, that is the invasion. And... I may have sent a last-minute letter to some people.”

From the clouds emerged multiple Water Tribe ships. Then, sky bison. Enfys recognized some immediately. “Mumma!” she cried. She kissed Cassian’s cheek, making Luke and Leia gape. She threw open her glider and flew towards her people. Her mother laughed as Enfys dropped onto the bison’s head. Straps secured her mother to the bison's head, her two prosthetic legs hidden underneath a blanket.

“Oh, Enfys, my love,” Eira Nest said, kissing her forehead and cheeks, her warmth at once familiar, “How you’ve grown.”

“I missed you, Mumma, the Cloudriders. To see faces like mine,” she choked out.

Her mother pressed their foreheads together. “Every night I would miss you so much it would ache,” Eira told her, “I am so proud, Enfys. So very proud, and so very sad.”

They held each other all the way down to land. Chirrut and the twins had earthbent several docks for the ships.

There were so _many_ people. So many Rebels, so many friends Team Avatar had made. There were the Cloudriders, of course. Enfys saw Oola and many of Jabba’s former slaves amongst them. Ahsoka was there with a contigent from Shili. There was also an Air Nomad Tribe from the Earth Kingdom island of Onderon in the Southeast. There were even some from the Northern Air City of Takodana. Enfys practically bounced on her toes, taking it all in.

She began introducing Luke as best she could, but she could hear her aunties snickering. Eira turned to her, raising an eyebrow. “What was that about growing tired of pale faces?” she asked in their tongue.

“Okay, let’s go,” Enfys said loudly, grabbing Luke’s elbow.

“But we haven’t finished -”

“No, no, we’re done,” she said, hurrying him away.

“Your Mum is kind of scary,” Luke said. Enfys groaned, though she couldn’t help smiling as her aunties waggled their eyebrows at her.

She saw Leia embracing her parents, and clapping Cassian on the back, in front of the Southern Water Tribe contingent. She also saw Cassian nod at motley crew of the _Stinger Mantis_. Chirrut and Baze were enthusiastically talking to some Rebels from Jedha. Han hugged a grinning Lando, who had brought with him some from Bespin, as well as crew from Sullust, grim-faced miners who clutched their tools tight. The handmaidens were there, kissing Luke and Leia’s cheeks, with a large number of Naboo soldiers.

Then Luke took her hand. “Here, there are so many people you haven’t met!”

Enfys smiled and let him lead her by the hand. He introduced her first to the Lothal Rebel Cell, which seemed to have just as many allies as Team Avatar did. “So, this Ezra, Cassian broke him out of prison – the first time he was in prison, Cassian’s been to prison a lot, hasn’t he? -, and here’s Sabine and the Mandalorians, oh and a Mandalorian bounty hunter – Ketsu, was it? – and Hera and Master Kanan and the Northern Water Tribe, where’s Rex…”

“Captured,” Sabine said. The Mandalorian contigent grew silent. “Imprisoned during the Purge of Mandalore by _traitors_.”

“Mandalore… Mandalore fell?” Luke said, shocked.

Sabine removed her helmet, nodding. “After they seized Mon Cala, they’ve increased occupation of other states.”

Luke nodded gravely, squeezing her hand tight.

There were the people of the Yavin Swamp, in full warrior regalia. There was Lina Graf and even more earthbenders. “Are those…pirates?” Enfys whispered, as a brown-skinned Earth Kingdom man yelled, “Luke, my boy!”

“Yeah…let’s just avoid them.” He gave a small wave though at the pirate crew of a Water Tribe vessel, most of whom were women. Luke brightened when they saw a familiar face. “General Ackbar! Wedge!”

Though small, the Mon Cala forces were well-armed. Luke hugged Wedge, while General Ackbar introduced Enfys to some of the forces, including the stiff-lipped Admiral Raddus, who clasped her arm firmly. Wedge was with a group of heavily armed cavalry, “The Rogue Squadron,” he said with a grin, making Luke smile.

Hope bloomed in Enfys’ chest. They could do this. There were still so many willing to commit to this frankly insane plan. “I think the General Organas are going to explain what will happen,” Ackbar said, “And then it’s time for you to get ready, Luke!”

At his bewildered expression, Enfys poked his shabby beard. “I think we all much prefer you clean-shaven,” she said teasingly. Luke’s ears went pink.

Jyn placed the new candle on her family’s altar. With a small burst of flame, it lit. Before her lay a wrapped package of Bodhi’s old Fire Nation uniforms. There was not much else he had kept in his old living quarters. Whatever was left had been lost in the North, and then on their long journey to Mon Cala.

She did not know what Spirits Bodhi prayed to. She had never asked. She would never get the chance to, again. So, she prayed to her own. Sól, Spirit of the Sun, watch over him. The great Spirit of the Phoenix, rebirth him into new life. A peaceful one. The dragon, Tira’Taka, grant him freedom from the endless cycles of hatred. The volcano grant him strength and courage and power.

Jyn ran her hands over the cloth. They ignited. Jyn watched them burn until they were only ash and dust. For a moment, she teetered. Her North Star…

She stood. One step. Do the next right thing. And then the next, and the next, on and on. She would keep going. When it was done, and over, she would let herself cry.

In her pack, she placed a few treasured items of her parents and Bodhi. In it were a change of clothes and some food. Then she stepped into Iden’s room. She pulled on the other woman’s black uniform and helmet. Her tonfas she strapped to her back. “I’m sorry,” she said.

She walked from the house.  
  


Leia watched as Cassian spread out the map of the Fire Nation capital. They had gathered on the edges of Scarif, an area of pure white sand, tall trees, and occasional giant squid. It spread out in tiny dotted islands of palms, filled with clear blue water. In the distance, Leia could see the slope of the main island, with a black tower.

Breha and Bail, who had been to Coruscant before the War, explained the plan. “Our best point of entry is Scarif's tightly controlled secondary harbour,” Bail began, pointing to a narrow slip of rock on the edges of Scarif. “A mechanized gate is used to protect it. Our plan is to breach the gates and land on the shore of Scarif here. Captain Andor, Draven, and Bey, myself and Breha, and the Jedha squadron will be in charge of our sea assault.”

“After that,” Breha continued, “We will mount a land invasion up through the coastal districts into the city and the Imperial Palace. The Palace is the most heavily fortified building and must be taken during the eclipse, which lasts only eight minutes.”

“The land invasion leaders for each squadron are General Ackbar and Admiral Raddus, General Syndulla, General Gerrera, Tano and Nest, Captain Rex, General Madine, and Generals Solo and Calrissian.”

Han made a choking nose next to her. “Any words, General Solo?” General Madine commented.

“Oh, uh, no, no, sounds great,” Han managed. Multiple people stared at him.

“Hey,” Leia said in a low voice, “It will be fine. You and Lando will have each other’s backs. Chewie too.”

Han cleared his throat. Raising a hand, he asked, "And that big tower? Is that a problem?"

Bail shook his head. "The tower is an information repository."

Han looked embarrassed. Leia squeezed his shoulder. “This isn't going to be your moment of truth, Han. It’ll be out there. I know you can do it.”

Han nodded, running his hand through his scruffy hair. Ever since the Siege of the North, Han had changed. The responsibility, Leia thought, suited him, scruffy or no. She kissed his cheek, and hoped she would see him again, after…

“When this is over,” Breha was saying, “The Avatar, Luke and Leia, will have defeated the Fire Lord and this War will be over!”

That. Leia forced herself to smile and cheer with the crowd. The Water Tribes roared, _“¡Libertad! ¡Libertad!”_

Then it was time to get ready. Leia braided her hair tightly around her head in a coronet. It exposed the slave brand from Jabba, still scarred onto her, but Leia held no shame in it. Her parents had brought new clothes. She shimmied quickly into a green embroidered Earth Kingdom blouse, and loose dark pants. She cinched the blouse with an embroidered Water Tribe belt, and pulled on her Tribe bracers alongside new leather gloves. Beside her, Enfys was dressed in her old outfit, buckling on her armour and cape. Her friend seemed to grow taller as she did so, shedding the weight of hiding and innumerable prejudice. When the War was won, she would change that, Leia promised herself.

They stepped out of the tent. She took in her friends. Baze and Chirrut were back in their old clothing as well, but had added in new gleaming armour from the Jedha Rebels. Chirrut smiled at her, “You look magnificent.”

She swatted him playfully, and helped Baze with fastening the remainder of his explosives to his belts. Han had changed into a Corellian shirt and pants, with a lightly-armoured vest. His sword hung from his hip. He looked faintly green. Lando, on the other hand, was resplendent in a yellow tunic, trousers and cape. Cassian had switched into his embroidered Water Tribe jacket, over a loose shirt that hung from his shoulder to his hip, exposing part of his chest. He secured two water skins to his back, buckling multiple knives to his belt, boots, and bracers. Artoo, Chewie, and Kay all wore light armour designed for them. Cassian had strapped two gourds of water to Kay as well, which the mongoose lizard was fussing over, as usual.

Leia fed Threepio some seeds and told him to stick close, making him whimper.

Finally, Luke finished shaving his beard, and trimmed his hair. Then her twin turned to face her. In his sleeveless dark green, almost black shirt and vest, dark trousers, black gloves and boots, Leia’s first thought was, Vader. Then, this is my brother. She trusted Luke above anyone else. They would follow each other to whatever end.

Cassian handed them each a water skin. Then Enfys produced two new gliders from the Cloudriders. “We’ve modified them so that you can strap your hand in here,” she said, indicating a little clasp. It was perfect for them. Leia had feared never being able to fly again without being able to grip a glider. They pulled together into a hug. Felt each other’s hearts beating. It would be okay. It had to be, Leia thought fiercely. She would die for them if she had to, but she wanted to live for them, too.

Then it was just her and Luke. “I… I do believe there’s good in him,” Luke said, gripping her hand, “Just give me a few minutes to try. And if he won’t try for remorse, then…”

“Alright,” Leia said slowly. "But..."

She didn’t need to speak. He squeezed her hand. They walked towards the ships.  
  


Enfys sat holding her helmet as she rode atop her mother’s sky bison. The sky was full of Air Nomads, protected by the clouds. Enfys drank in the sight. Mostly women, with some men, ranging from tan to deep brown, hair coiling or curling in the wind. Afros, locs, twists, curls, and more surrounded her. They were a riot of yellows, oranges, red, and golds. Some were heavily tattooed, like the people of Shili, with dyed hair. Others painted their bodies, pierced, or wore masks like her Tribe, but they were all _her_ people, wherever they came from.

She nodded at Ahsoka, bending the clouds easily around them, who gave her a two-fingered salute. Shaak Ti bent in tandem with Ahsoka, modifying her style for the amputated stub of her arm, her torso easily shifting in the circular rhythm of airbending. A Mandalorian travelled with Shaak, whom she’d only said was an 'old soldier from another war'. She saw Captain Pamlo and Lando, both from Bespin. Steela Gerrera of Onderon sat at the head of the company. Enfys admired her instantly, from Steela’s black twists pulled back with a scarf, to her muscled arms beneath a yellow wrapped top, as she gripped the bison’s reins. Steela’s people had adapted to the humid weather of the Southeast Earth Kingdom: most of the women wore simple wrapped or one-shouldered tops and loose breeches, with the few men wearing only sarongs. Armbands, anklets, and headpieces of woven grass were common.

Enfys almost smiled imagining Saw Gerrera being bullied by his boisterous older sister, but the thought dimmed. Saw Gerrera was dead.

Once in her mind rebellion had been a tiny scrap of desert called Savareen. Now it was the world.

“Today the Fire Nation will learn we are not foolish pacifists, waiting for their occupation and enslavement,” she said, her voice carrying.

She snapped her helmet on, directing with sign-language. The Cloudrider bison formed into an arrow, readying their chains. Enfys continued to sign, the message passing on from one bison to another. _Aim for the watch towers, direct fire away from the ground troops._ Gliders opened, airbenders banking around the group.

The Air Nomads punched their fists in the air, singing _Freedom! Freedom!_ They broke through the clouds to the battle raging below. They Invasion had begun.  
  


Cassian helped to bend the fog around the ship as they drew closer and closer to the shield-gate: huge stones mounted in the sea that blocked the secondary harbour, with movable layered metal gates to be opened and closed. It was almost time. Chirrut and Baze stood alongside other earthbenders. Enfys was overhead with the Air Nomads. As the sirens began to blare as soldiers spotted them, Han turned back towards the looming city, steering the Falcon expertly. The Tribesmen began to lower ice-covered explosives into the water. He heard other captains shouting orders to their own. “On my mark,” he ordered. They were nearing… “Fire!”

The waterbenders struck. The missiles hit. Metal exploded. With a screech, a flaming metal net, secured to the gate pillars, rose to block them. A huge seaweed creature rose up, smashing through it with one swipe. Luminara. But the gates held, and they were getting closer and closer.

He heard the cry of the Northern waterbenders. Aboard Admiral Raddus' ship, they were forcing back one of the metal Fire Nation warships. It crashed against the shield-gate. The explosion was bright and blinding. There was the pained screech of metal as stone shattered into the sea.

Then they were through.

The Falcon hit the beach. He saw Leia give Han a quick kiss before she and Luke mounted Artoo, charging towards the Imperial Palace. As the troops started to take the beach, volleys rained down. “Block those missiles!” Cassian yelled. Scarif was a waterbender's paradise. He waded through the water, drawing himself up into a water-spout. He needed to keep the fire off them until all the ships landed. He bent icy cliffs with swift strikes, catching as many fireballs as he could. Fire Nation troops poured out across their path.

Cassian absorbed everything in fragments, dropping down onto the main beach leading towards the capital. Lando and Han back to back, yelling orders. Chirrut digging his hands into a tank, bending the metal with ease. Baze firing off explosives. Chirrut laughing at Han’s face, tossing a tank into the air like a toy. The airbenders tearing through the watch-towers like paper. Everywhere, screaming and fire. And in his pocket, the ticking clock as they inched slowly towards Coruscant.

Coruscant, and Jyn and Bodhi. He hoped they lived. He did not know what he would do, when this was won, if they had been killed long before. And if Jyn lived, then….

Pulling water from Kay’s gourds, he sliced the treads straight off a tank. Coating his arms with water, he cut a path straight through the cavalry. He swept aside several komodo rhino squads. Kay hissed at them. “Focus, Kay,” Cassian said. Kay made a noise that clearly showed what he thought of _that_.

There was a huge explosion ahead. Cassian shielded his face. They had breached a wall into the beach districts of Coruscant, Vardos and Nacronis, whatever their names were. “The Fire Nation is falling back!” someone called.

Cassian pulled the chrono from his pocket. The eclipse was nearly upon them.  
  


Bodhi pressed his hands together. He prayed to one of Jedha’s many Spirits, the horned buffalo Spirit, she who had nurtured the arid valley. There was no earth in which to bury an offering, if he still possessed anything of Jyn’s. He hoped that this would be enough. Give Jyn the peace in your arms she had never found in life. Rebirth her anew into somewhere softer, kinder.

“Eclipse is almost here,” Kyle said from the other cell, “Guard should be coming for with lunch right on time. Are you praying for...”

“My sister,” Bodhi said. “I’m telling her goodbye.”  
  


Artoo bounded up steps of the Imperial Palace, Threepio screeching in terror above. They were ahead of the eclipse. Luke had not forgotten his father’s power.

Only the Avatar, at their full ascendancy, could stand against that.

Servants and guards scattered as they bent air, earth, and water to make their way into the heart of the Palace. They raced up the steps, crashing through hallways of imperious-looking royal portraits, courtyards of statues, and huge rooms of reclining couches for parties. At last, they found a huge set of wooden doors, sealed shut. Looking at each other, they bent a huge sphere of air together, each forming one side of the hand movements. The doors were thrown clear across the atrium. Then it was a straight run to the throne. Sucking in a breath, Luke threw aside the curtain separating the atrium from the throne.

The room was empty. Carved columns flanked the walk towards a raised basalt throne. A large brazier sat in front of it, unlit. Luke could only stare mutely. Leia walked towards the brazier and swept her fingers across. “Cold,” she said.

“They knew,” Luke breathed. In Mon Cala, Vader, Thrawn…

“Avatar!”

They whirled around. Mon Mothma was standing there, looking ashen. Instantly, they bent the palace ground, encasing her in rock. They had failed, as Yoda, as Ben, had always thought they would, if they had known the truth. _“Where are they?”_

“Please,” she choked, “I’ve always been on your side, I didn’t know either…”

Artoo let out a loud bark. It was loud as a gong, and Luke remembered himself. They sagged, freeing her. The ugliness that had rose up in him swept away, leaving only shame.

“We’ve been tricked,” Mon Mothma said, rubbing her throat, “There’s rioting in the streets, but the Fire Lord is gone. Nobody in the city knew the eclipse was coming.”

“We need to get back. Mon, leave – nobody can know you’re involved,” Leia said.

“There’s something else going on,” Luke said, looking towards the slowly darkening sky, “I have a bad feeling about this. They wouldn’t abandon Coruscant.”

They jumped aboard Artoo, racing down towards the burning harbour districts below.  
  


“Iden Versio, was it?”

Her face concealed by the helmet, Jyn nodded. On the beach below the tower's base, troops were fighting. Waterbenders, earthbenders, airbenders clashing with the Fire Nation militia.

“You’re cleared to enter,” the guard said, “Welcome to the Scarif Record Facility.”

Jyn stepped through the doors. Behind her, the sky was beginning to darken. The Moon was crossing over the Sun. She could feel her firebending begin to wane.

But then, so was everyone else’s.

“You’re sure about this timing?” Kyle said.

Bodhi nodded, trying to keep his mind focused. He’d studied the patterns of the prison guards and meal-times. He knew the exact timing of the eclipse. “Just hit the wall, right there,” Bodhi indicated. He continued to count down in his head. “We have one minute.”

In a smaller voice, he said, “I trust you.”

Kyle gritted his teeth. In the small, cramped cell, he began to bend. The air cracked and split, shrieking as positive and negative energies were wrenched apart. Blue-white energy crackled at his fingertips. “Bodhi, duck!”

He dropped. The bolt of lightning smashed through the gap in the cell-bars, striking true where the wall met the ceiling. Stone shattered, crashing down around him. Bodhi lifted his head. A hole lay a bit above, just large enough for a man.

He tore at the stone, forcing it into a makeshift step-ladder. It felt good to throw the stone around. The anger was a breath of cool air after a lifetime sitting by a hot fire.

His hands were bruised and his shoulders ached as he pulled himself up and out of the hole. The air was outside was dark and tasted faintly of ash. But it was fresh, real. He breathed in for a moment. Then he crawled out of the dirt, fighting through the dirty shrubs planted along the prison walls, and looked up.

Bodhi was outside. He was under a dark sky, with the faint red outline of the Sun beneath the Moon.

He breathed as though he were new-born. His body felt stripped clean, washed by cold water and re-made. If the guards shot him now, Spirits, it would all be worth it.

Tearing around the side of the prison, he found most of the guards had fled. His fist, clumsy and untrained, found the face of the one remaining. He plucked a key-ring from the man’s belt. Racing down through the prison, he downed what guards remained. They had always relied on their firebending, believing it greater, purer, than any other power.

How easily that could be changed.

Finally, he reached Kyle’s cell. Fumbling with the keys, he got the door open. In the light, Kyle was a handsome man. “I could kiss you,” Kyle said, stretching his limbs.

“Later. We need to get out of here,” Bodhi said.

Kyle nodded. “We need to get to the docks, steal a ship, and join up with the Rebels in the Earth Kingdom. Doesn’t sound like they’re anywhere near the Palace.”

Bodhi pursed his lips but nodded.  
  


Jyn walked quickly through the halls of Scarif’s tower. Through the slits of windows, she could see the unnatural colour of the sky. The Day of Black Sun was nearly here. She would have eight minutes. Jyn forced herself not to run. She couldn’t slow herself down by attracting attention. She clenched and unclenched her hands as she climbed higher and higher through the tower into the central repository.

Two guards were standing outside. Now Jyn did not wait. She pulled her tonfas. With two direct hits, Jyn felled them. With one last gasp of fire, she pressed her glowing hand to the central locking system. The heat triggered the mechanical system inside. Gears began to turn. Jyn could hear her blood pounding in her skull.

With a crunch, the door opened. Not a moment too soon. Jyn felt her inner fire go cold. It was like a hole had been punched straight through her. The waterbenders, in the Siege of the North, must have felt the exact same fear when Tarkin killed the Moon. A total solar eclipse blanketed the Fire Nation. They were as powerless now as the peoples they destroyed.

She stepped inside. Shelf after shelf stood before her. For a second, Jyn allowed the certain knowledge that she would die on this beach wash over. Then she choked it down. Walking towards the lectern in the centre, she stared for a moment at the innumerable names of different projects, successful or otherwise. She doubted it, but she still checked. No record named Death Star, maybe –

“Jyn?”

Iden and Ciena were behind her. Jyn reached for her tonfas. “I’m not here to stop you,” Iden snapped, “I’m here to warn you. I want to see you survive your choices.”

“Speak for yourself,” Ciena said. She was bouncing on her feet. “The invasion…”

“The Avatar survived,” Jyn said over her shoulder. Iden, momentarily distracted, joined her, eyebrows raised at all the names. She said, “How are you going to find it?”

Jyn’s finger stopped on the lectern. “I just did. Project Stardust.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s me,” Jyn whispered. Even now, months after he had died on the rain-swept mountainside of Eadu, her father pursued her. His love for her had never wavered, just as he had said. But Galen Erso was dead. Saw Gerrera was dead. Krennic was far behind her. Jyn was on her own now. She straightened her spine and checked the number listed. “Shelf DS-1.”

“Iden!” Ciena cried. “You can’t seriously be thinking of _helping_ her.”

“They’re going to use the Death Star today, Ciena,” Iden snapped. Jyn whipped her head up. “My father told me,” Iden whispered, “They’re going to test it on the invasion forces. It’s targeting the entire secondary harbour areas on the Scarif Peninsula.”

“But,” Ciena breathed, “But the people are still here. There was no evacuation. Your family in the Vardos District, the civilians…”

“It’s perfect,” Iden said hollowly, “Operation: Cinder. The lower-classes have become bold and angry. Now the Fire Lord will prove there is no hope of defiance, that we’re nothing. Expendable.”

“They wouldn’t -”

“If you had looked up from your honour,” Jyn said, as she began to walk towards the shelves. Her body was shaking. They were going to die here. She forced herself to keep going, past shelf after shelf of innumerable projects. “You would know it’s true. Is it that shocking? This country, which treats you as lesser than they are. Which has turned its back on its own people. This country, where torturing and imprisoning a _child_ is just collateral damage!”

Ciena’s voice shook. “It was necessary…”

“It was cruel!” Jyn yelled, whirling around. “And it was wrong. Growing up, we were told that the Fire Nation was the greatest civilization in the world. That this War was to stop other Nations from hurting _us_ , that we needed this to keep _us_ safe from _them_. We would make the world peaceful, and safe, after the Separatists.”

Her hand fell on the marked scroll. In careful curling Fire Nation script, it read _Project Stardust_. “What an amazing lie that was. The other Nations were _never_ trying to harm us. We are subjugating, enslaving, and occupying others. The people of the world _hate_ us. And we deserve it!”

Jyn shoved the plans into her pack as she strode back towards the two women. “We’ve done nothing for this world but create more chaos and suffering. I’m done being the tool of that evil – anyone’s tool.”

Ciena was standing in front of the door. Jyn raised her chin challengingly. “Get out of my way, Ciena. Or I'll move you.”

Ciena stared. Jyn saw a thousand decisions warring across her face. Then, Ciena stepped away, looking down at her feet. Iden coughed. “You won’t be able to get out the way you came. There’s a back ladder that leads towards the harbour. And a war balloon there.”

“Mine,” Ciena muttered. “Mine that I stole because you talked me into this…”

Jyn turned to look at Iden, her friend. How strange. _Come with me,_ she didn’t say. Iden smiled very slightly, pulling a series of throwing knives from her belt. “Go to your rebels, Jyn Erso. People are coming. We can delay Krennic, give you time to warn them.”

Jyn took one last look at Ciena and Iden. Then she ran.  
  


Cassian listened with half an ear as his friends crouched over the map of Coruscant, trying to figure out their next step. The earthbenders had bent walls around their position, trying to hold back the advancing tide as they planned. The eclipse was ending. They had not reached the city proper. Their generals and leadership were arguing desperately. Something though, was glinting on the horizon. He couldn’t stop looking at it. He heard the sound of Artoo's paws. The twins bounded towards them, Threepio screeching at the top of his lungs. “They knew,” Leia said, “Vader and the Fire Lord have vanished. The military elite is probably aware as well.”

Fierce arguing arose. “We’re trapped here! We must sue for peace!”

"We are not going to surrender!" Cassian snapped, trying to make out what the shape on the horizon was. But the generals kept arguing, one of them insisting there was no more hope and - Cassian seized the front of his lapels. "We are not surrendering. We can retreat and regroup, but if we surrender, it's over. My family died because of them. My people are being wiped out. They'll finish the job if they win. I am not letting that happen, even if I have to die on this beach to make it so!"

He could hear murmurs of agreement, but the voices of the leaders were loudest, all the same. "You might hate the Fire Nation, Captain Andor," the man said, "But keep your personal feelings out of this."

"No," Cassian spat, even though it was true, no matter what revolution he had started, "I love my people."

The disagreement was getting fiercer. He saw in the eyes of the foot-soldiers, people he knew, like Ruescott Melshi, or Pao, or General Ackbar, that they agreed with him. They needed a plan, and they needed it now. Cursing, Cassian stepped away from the map, turning his eyes back to the horizon. He paused, squinting at the dark shape. “A war balloon is coming! Wait, don’t shoot!”

A sizeable number of people obeyed him instantly. The rest pulled their weapons and bending, fanning out in a tight circle. As the balloon landed in the circle, a small, pale figure jumped out. She ducked a hastily earthbent rock.

She raised her hands and cried, “I come in peace! Please, you have to retreat, now!”

Cassian spoke. “Jyn.” Louder, _“Don’t shoot!”_

Despite the yelling of people like General Pamlo and Madine, multiple people pulled back. Jyn warily stepped forward, hands still raised. “Let the girl speak,” Admiral Raddus rumbled. "If she's crazy enough to defect in the middle of an invasion, she has something worth saying."

There was desperation on her face. “My name is Jyn Erso!"

That was not the best lead-in. He saw muttering, _daughter of the weapons scientist?_

Jyn cleared her throat. "The Fire Nation knew about the invasion from the start. They allowed it to happen, so that they could test the Death Star on your forces!” she yelled, “But there is still hope! I have here the plans for the Death Star! My father built it, and inside is a chance to destroy it, in one strike!”

She held aloft a scroll. “You must not surrender! Please, there is still a chance to win, but it is not today! Take your people and regroup, prepare for the day of the comet, when you can end the War.”

Cassian began to walk towards Jyn, shouldering his way through the crowd. More voices were rising, as the Generals and leaders debated. Accusations flew. “We should surrender! We joined an alliance, not a suicide pact!”

"By the day of the comet, it will be too late!"

“What chance do we have to take down a superweapon?”

“What chance do we have?” Jyn cried, fire in her eyes. “The question is, what choice? Run, hide, plead for mercy, scatter your forces – if we give way to an enemy this evil, with this much power, there won’t be a world left to save! The Fire Lord intends to burn down the world on the day of the comet!"

There was stunned silence. Whispers were growing, words of agreement. "You have to retreat. Keep hope alive! Study the plans. Find the weakness my father placed within in it. It's the only way to end the War.”

Cassian pushed past the spears. Pamlo shook her head. “You’re asking us to trust the words of a dying imperial scientist, of a defector, a criminal, to flee and continue fighting against a superweapon, based on nothing but _hope_!”

Jyn’s eyes blazed. “Rebellions are built on hope.”

She stopped.

Cassian had stepped in front of her, into the circle of spears, ice daggers, and earthbent projectiles. Everyone seemed to freeze. For a heartbeat, Cassian drank in her face, her green eyes, the point of her nose, the defiance of her stance. She was here. She was _here_.

He spoke to her directly. “They’re never going to believe you.”

He saw something cross her face, like she was swallowing a sob. She looked so pale and exhausted as she spread her arms sarcastically. “I appreciate the support.”

“But I do. I believe you.”

Jyn’s eyes widened. “We’ve all done terrible things on behalf of the Rebellion,” Cassian continued, projecting his voice so others could hear. Their friends began to push through the crowd. “Everything I did, I did for the Rebellion. And every time I walked away from something I wanted to forget, I told myself it was for a cause that I believed in. A cause that was worth it.”

He looked at Cere, Hondo, Wedge, Rue, Pao, tens of others. “Many of us here are defectors, assassins, criminals. We all believed there was hope in ending this War. Without that, we’re lost. If we surrender, nothing awaits but more suffering. Occupation, colonisation. Everything we’ve done would’ve been for nothing. I couldn’t face myself. None of us can.”

He lifted his chin as Luke, Leia, and the others joined him and Jyn. “I’ve given my life to this cause. I’m going with _my_ team. You can follow. Or you can surrender, and watch your people burn, as you let them burn twenty years ago.”

Now people were yelling in earnest. More and more were beginning to call to retreat. Multiple people were nodding at him, gathering into teams to make towards the beach to escape. He heard orders being called, people grabbing their weapons and preparing to head out, and there was Jyn, still holding the plans, looking dumbfounded.

She turned her face up towards him. Cassian tilted his head down, meeting her gaze. His breath caught. There were so many things he could say in this moment:

_How could you, you betrayed us, I’m sorry, you told me to run, I looked for you in every face, would you have kissed me back, would you have come, you don’t know how hard these two months were, without you –_

“I’m not used to people believing me when things go bad,” Jyn said.

“Welcome home,” he told her, and she smiled, bright as the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *throws confetti*


	38. Book Three: Rebirth IX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was sick on Monday (not Covid, just a stomach bug), back with the latest update! One line of dialogue from one of Uncle Iroh's classic words of wisdom. 
> 
> The theme for our heroes valiant retreat from danger is the ironically titled [Hope](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaEzKRngCyY)
> 
> .

The retreat was pure chaos. Chirrut dug his feet into the dirt, bending with the surviving earthbenders a huge wall to block off rear attack from the encroaching land forces. Baze fired off explosives over the wall until Chirrut dragged him away. Baze was not a violent man, but the Fire Nation had taken everything from him, and he would fight her war, one of retribution and the final destruction of the Death Star and all aboard it, Jyn knew. Those who chose surrender were stubbornly staying behind in the camp.

She saw Leia screaming something as a fireball burst over the barricade and crashed into one of the Alderaani. Two brown-skinned people who must have been her foster parents were speaking urgently to her. Han was trying to rally his own troops, but they were all a tumble as they fled down towards the ships at the beaches. A dark-skinned Air Nomad man in a flamboyant cape stepped in. “Go on without me, I’ve got this!” he called, as Han’s face burnt with frustration.

A woman she could only assume was Enfys’ mother was gripping her face tightly. “You have to go, Enfys. Please, you must go with the Avatar,” she was insisting.

Enfys still had her helmet on, so it was impossible to see her face. But she gripped her mother’s hands tightly. “No! I won’t let the Fire Nation separate our family again!”

“It will only be for a short while,” her mother said, kissing the flat pane of her helmet. “This is your path, Enfys.”

Jyn looked for someone to fight as people continued to be run and be air-lifted out, but there was no one. Instead Team Avatar was being shoved towards Ciena’s war balloon while the leaders tried to organize the retreat. The rebels began to run. Cassian was shouting orders at people to move in different units, jumping aboard what few ostrich horses and animals were left. The Air Nomads were pulling as many as they could aboard their sky bison.

Abruptly, a dark-skinned woman was right in front of her. Jyn froze. She looked so much like… “Steela? Steela Gerrera?” she managed, fighting to keep her face still and smooth in the war zone.

“My brother, we were estranged,” Steela said, in a rush, “But he told me once about, it doesn’t matter what he said. About you. Your father should never have made you part of this.”

“I was trying to help,” Jyn started, feeling like she’d been slapped, but Steela cut her off. “You were a _child_ , Jyn. You shouldn’t have been expected to become a soldier.”

Jyn stared at her. Suddenly she felt twelve again, young and desperate to earn something already gone. _I miss you, Mama._ People continued shouting. “How did he die?” Steela asked, gripping her wrist.

Jyn swallowed. “He tried fighting back. There were…there were Siege weapons. He must have… I don’t know. I don’t _know_.”

Steela closed her eyes for a moment. She looked old, but the lines around her eyes and mouth were gentle. They were like Saw’s. “He died killing them, then,” she said, and she thought Steela understood, too, why Saw Gerrera mattered, and deserved to be remembered with the Rebellion, “When we win, my tribe is in Onderon, in the Earth Kingdom. You’re welcome to come with us.”

“Thank you,” Jyn whispered. Then Steela was gone, yelling orders to the Onderon Nomads. Someone grabbed her hand. She looked up and saw it was Cassian, pulling her towards the war balloon. “We have to go,” he said, “We have to get the twins out.”

There was no time to argue. She had expected to be taken in chains. She wondered if Cassian knew what it meant when he had said _welcome home,_ and thought he did.

Jyn firebent to get the balloon rising. Enfys, Luke, and Leia had all snapped off into the air in their gliders. They careened over the Scarif Peninsula as rebels fought towards their ships. Leia dipped down, trying to help. We can make it, Jyn thought, we can, we can –

Then she heard something. It was the hum of an engine, bigger than the largest Dreadnaught. “Look,” Han said, strangled.

“What are we looking at?” Chirrut said, “I’m blind, remember!”

“Is that…” Cassian started.

“The Death Star,” Jyn gasped, “It’s an airship.”

On the horizon, a dark shape had risen up, large enough to blot out the sun. The black hull bristled with strange lines and cables. On the front was a small deck on which she saw men running about. The wrongness, floating in the air. It staggered her. Smaller airships rose up to surround it. She stumbled backwards and hit Baze and Chirrut, who grabbed her shoulders tight. “So, it’s a bombing run?” Baze said.

“No.” Unbidden, her finger moved upwards towards a glittering crystal point at the front of the airship. “The kyber… somehow, it’s going to concentrate the firebending power…”

There was a spark of red energy from the tip of the crystal point. The heat was overwhelming, painting shadows on the cliff sides.

A burst of fire, hotter than the sun, smashed down from the firing mechanism onto the Scarif Peninsula.  
  


Leia clutched the body tight to her chest. Tried to coolly, detached, recall which Southern Water Tribe, Alderaani, had died and she could do nothing, only sit and watch as others fought the war for her. Caline Metara. A woman who had fled Alderaan several years before, and become a pirate to feed herself and her family.

“Take care of them,” Caline rasped, as blood pooled around her mouth.

Then her parents were dragging her off the body and telling her to get on Jyn’s war balloon. “No!” Leia screamed, “No! I can’t leave you all to, to -”

“It won’t be for too long, I promise,” her father was saying, stroking her hair. “We’ll find each other again. But the Avatar has to make it out, Leia. It’s the only way to keep hope alive.”

Hope. A figurehead, the little princess in white who sat in on their rebel meetings and hid in snowbanks while the raids thundered overhead, who was beautiful and daring, but not too much so, and kind – who had choked Mon Mothma in a fit of panic and paranoia.

“I… I… In the palace, I…” She swallowed, allowing the mask of the Princess, the Avatar, to form over her face. A figurehead never failed. A figurehead had to inspire her people. Even if the great truth was out, and Evaan was to become Chief, Leia mattered to her people. They were _hers_. “Yes. I am the Chosen One, after all.”

_Like father._

Bail and Breha’s brows furrowed. But they kissed her cheeks, pushing her towards her friends. She tossed open her glider, the wrist brace clicking into place around her disabled hand. Leia soared over the fleeing rebels heading towards the ships. She arced around Jyn’s war balloon, trying to desperately tamp down her rising fury. Baze had said anger was important, righteous, cleansing, but –

Then the airships were flying overhead. Leia was grounded in the immediate terror of the situation. The encroaching army had gotten past the earthen wall. They grabbed the surrendering rebels. But they were so close to the ships. Now they were stumbling through the shallow seas. They could make it.

Leia dipped lower unconsciously. Master Kanan was bending huge sheets of water to hold back the advance. He bent thicker and thicker ice sheets. Fireballs impacted the wall. Kanan shuddered, hands outstretched to keep the ice intact.

“Kanan!” Chief Hera yelled.

The ice cracked. Kanan looked back at the fleeing rebels. He exhaled, re-freezing the wall. His left leg lashed out. A whip of water caught Hera around the middle. She was flung backwards. She screamed as Ezra and Sabine seized her. They dragged her away, tears on their faces.

There was a sound in the distance of air cracking apart.

Something bright and blinding fired from the Death Star. A halo formed around the falling red star. It cut through the clouds, turning the air bloody. It impacted the Scarif Peninsula.

“Master Kanan!” Leia cried out.

Those directly under the blast: Tynnra Pamlo, Dravits Draven. Madine. Biggs Darklighter. Dak Ralter. So many. Your child, your lover, your parent, was vaporized instantly. They felt a moment of unimaginable pain and then – nothing. Ash, then dust, floating away in the wind.

There are no bones.

The blast spread outwards. It boiled the sea and tore the surface straight off the impact zone. The particles were blown upwards into the atmosphere. They ionized. Lightning storms began to gather. Scarif’s black tower shattered as the fire continued to spread.

Leia cried out. The wall of flames raced forward like mad dogs. More people vaporized into stardust. And the Fire Nation people, burnt alive in their homes, reduced to ash. The smaller airships were dropping bombs, throwing up silt and sand into the air. Now the sky was a toxic orange colour as the lightning storms racked across the Peninsula. Hundreds of people were caked in silt and died instantly. Operation: Cinder was genocidal, murdering rebel and native alike.

But Leia could only focus on one man. The fire was staring to fade, eating its way through the thick ice walls. She could reach him, she could reach him before it hit –

Kanan looked out at Hera for one single, heart-wrenching moment.

His body went up in flames.

She’s screaming as Luke called out for her. She banked away from the dissipating blast. She saw rebels being tossed and knocked over, surviving but left to be captured or killed.

Kanan Jarrus, her first waterbending master, died on the Scarif Peninsula together with hundreds of others, and Leia could only flee, tears stinging her vision.  
  


As the bombing continued, Luke darted towards the line of airships headed by the Death Star. Father is on board that, he thought. The Fire Lord would never miss seeing this cruelty.

He felt Leia pursue him, something like a scream tearing at her throat as they neared. Closer and closer, the ships grew larger and larger. They must have been the size of warships. And the Death Star was larger still.

 _Airbend, push them back,_ Leia thought.

 _There’s water in the clouds, together we brew a storm,_ he responded.

Leia nodded. He turned the glider downwards. Luke plunged. Leia soared, the two of them moving in dizzying circles, gathering wind and water. It swirled together, lightning crackling across. He had never loved Enfys and her people more for the glider modifications. It was impossible for him to properly close his hand. It always carried a dull pain.

The burnt hand had never hurt more today. It’s as though the fire was consuming it once more. Luke snapped his eyes towards the platform of the Death Star, as he passed.

Vader. Black mask, black armour, cape fluttering in the wind. Unchanged from Mon Cala, two months ago. He expected fire. Rage. Pain. His father just stood there.

“Why?” Luke wasn’t even sure his father could hear him. But Vader flinched. “Why did you do it?”

Vader said nothing.

He was standing on a machine that had murdered hundreds. Maybe Leia was right. _He’ll never change._

“Keep your secrets then,” he said, arcing away, “I have enough of my own.”

Vader extended his hand. In his fingertips, Luke saw sparks dancing. But the gesture was not cruel. It seemed almost unconscious, strangely more lucid than anything Vader had ever done before. Lightning, the glowing dragon heart of his father –

“Luke!”

Vader turned his head as Leia soared upwards. He felt Leia let go, loosing the wind and water she had gathered around her. Luke joined her. The storm crashed into the smaller airships. They shuddered, knocked off course. The bombs stopped falling. But the Death Star cut through, its great prow a knife’s edge. Below, the last of the rebel ships and sky bison launched.

If there was anyone left, there was nothing Luke could do now. He followed his sister, leaving the remains of Scarif behind.  
  


The world was turning into something out of a nightmare. “Go, go, go!” Lando yelled at the ship as it carried away Nien Nub and his miners and smugglers from Sullust. None of them had listened to Han and his yelling. But Lando was through playing General, too. Something had hit the Scarif Peninsula far away, the fire rushing forth and devouring everything. He needed to get on _something_ before it got him.

This was the perfect time to cut everyone loose, every person for themselves.

There wasn’t going to be much of a world left if Palpatine fired this on the day the comet came. And Lando liked the world. He liked it an awful lot. The heat on the beach was getting worse and worse. His skin was blistering. He could taste silt and dirt in his mouth as he raced towards another ship.

The shockwave hit him. He was thrown backwards, hitting one of the shallow sea patches. He sank, his head ringing. Water entered his lungs, and he gasped and choked. Darkness overwhelmed him. His last memories were of grasping tight to a scrap of beach.

When he awoke again, he heard a soldier saying, “We’ve got another one. Looks like a big-shot. Cuff him and send him in.”  
  


Vader stood behind Sidious at the front of the Death Star. The Fire Lord offered pointed congratulations to Director Krennic. The sycophant almost glowed with delight. In his hands was the power of destroy worlds. Crude, a waste of resources, lacking in any true thought or philosophy. Ordinarily, Vader would have raised a burning fist and threatened Krennic.

But he could only stand in silence until Krennic was dismissed. Sidious did not acknowledge him. He controlled his body. Vader looked at his gloved hands. Burnt all the way through the muscles and fat, kept functional only by continuous healing. The hands that, for a split second, had produced lightning. What had caused that?

The Avatar’s face was pale and drawn. Vader knew the great depths of the empty spaces of the heart, the hungry ghosts that whispered to be fed. _Burn him._

But then he had spoken, as though they were two ordinary people.

And the girl. Always watching, always there, at her brother’s side. Always watching him, waiting.

Vader had made sparks of lightning – why? To please them? To show that in the roiling hate, he was –

“And what do you think you’re doing?” Sidious whispered, as he stepped forward. The old man did not turn. Vader could hear the smile in his voice. “Perhaps you seek to strike me down. Is that what is in your heart, Lord Vader?”

“They are alive,” he rasped. “The Avatar lived.”

A long time ago, before the Avatar was found, when the old Avatar had died (you all but killed Mace Windu, now, let’s not hide from it), Vader had despised the Avatar. The Avatar who knew everything Vader did not. How to win over friends. How to protect yourself. How to change the world. How to save the. How to make people love you.

“It seems, Lord Vader, you have misunderstood this relationship, all this time.”

Fear – that is all Sidious knows.

Fire licked his body as he fell to the ground. Sidious laughed. “How low the Chosen One has fallen! A childish prophecy, when it is _I_ who raised you above your station!”

He hated this shadowy figure, the old withered man who he had followed, had whispered treacherous promises into his ear. This old man alone who knew what Vader had done. _No,_ he wished to say, _it is you who has misunderstood._

But his hands dropped, all the same, and he knelt before his Fire Lord.  
  


Hynestia, the Western Air City, was beautiful but ravaged. The island of Kef Bir was formed from high cliffs covered in tall grass, that dipped into valleys of salt-water lakes and rivers flocked with the birds and the long necks of giraffe-zebras. Docking the Falcon in a safe spot, they took the war balloon up. In the distance could be seen the edge of the Earth Kingdom. Hynestia was carved into the cliff-side, a hanging city of long spires made of adobe and stone, covered in geometric carvings, textiles, and flags. Green plants were intertwined with the balconies, growing while with the city’s abandonment.

They landed the balloon in a central rectangular courtyard. It had a large fountain, the water still bubbling. There were hanging textiles woven with brilliant orange and yellow thread, carved and painted masks and idols, with wide noses and full lips and rounded hips, like Enfys’ own.

It made the silence of the place worse.

Enfys reverently touched the broken tiles on the floor. Her fingers came away with ash. She could feel the ghosts still lingering here. No bodies. How strange. She felt as though she were walking through a dense fog, waiting to find rotting corpses in orange and yellow. The wind began to shift around her ankles. They took this from us. One of our few safe havens, and they took it from us.

Warm arms tightened around her body. Luke was holding her tight, rubbing loose circles on her back. “You’re not alone,” he told her, “You don’t have to face this by yourself.”

Enfys felt more hands. The group surrounded her to comfort their youngest. She swallowed thickly. She grasped Luke tightly, trying not to sob. He was warm and steady, though when she lifted her head, his eyes were blue. They widened in concern, one gloved hand rubbing her cheek. She wanted him to take the stupid gloves off, even if half the skin beneath was scarred and rough – _your father did that to you._

Then Han said, “Wait, _you’re_ still here?”

Jyn was standing behind them, still awkwardly holding the scroll of the Death Star plans. Her eyes flickered between Enfys’ tear-stained face and the destroyed temple. Her people, Luke and Leia’s people, Han’s people, had done this.

“Let me guess,” Leia said, “You’re _confused_ about your destiny, again.”

Enfys wanted to scream, to rage. But she didn’t hate them. She didn’t even hate Mon Mothma or Riyo Chuchi or Garm Bel Ibis or Scarlet Hark. These individuals… perhaps that was what Luke saw when he looked into the faces of those who were half his kin. Not the soulless soldiers. Not the cruelty depotism of the nobles. Luke saw the idealists and the children and those _trying_. He had faith.

She gritted her teeth. None of that had mattered when they attacked her tribe. Enfys, unlike any of these here, had been born into a world already deeply at War. Nobody had cared about her wide eyes or big heart or clumsy airbending when they had crippled her mother as she tried to protect her. No one had offered her a hand. The people of the Fire Nation didn’t deserve her pity.

But maybe some of them did. Maybe some of them deserved a chance to earn her faith. Those who had reached out to her first.

“Wait,” she said, wiping her eyes. She stood, tossing the ponytail of red coils out of her face. She had to tilt her chin down a bit to look Jyn in the eye. Jyn didn’t flinch, her mouth a flat line, but her eyes were afraid.

Enfys had never wanted anyone in the Fire Nation to be afraid of her. She just wanted most of them to leave her and her people alone, never come near again.

But she could make a singular exception.

Enfys extended her hand. “Come join us, Jyn,” she said. Jyn Erso, betrayer, her best friend, stared at her.

Then she stepped forward.  
  


“Okay, but she hasn’t answered the question – why is she _here_?” Han demanded. He had his arm around Leia, whose eyes were wet, and she glared at Jyn.

Jyn scowled back, cocking her chin. “Look, do you want a firebending teacher or not?”

“Good to know your attitude is still intact,” Leia muttered. But Luke was now looking thoughtful.

“Do you mean that? You want to teach us to firebend?” he said. His tone was carefully neutral, more mature than she had seen before, but his eyes were kind.

“Why are we even listening to this? The Death Star and the Fire Lord just killed hundreds of people, Master Kanan is _dead_ , we don’t know who managed to get out,” Leia’s face was growing red.

“The Death Star isn’t Jyn’s fault,” Cassian said quietly. Jyn straightened at his defense. He squeezed Leia’s hand. Leia bristled, but did not continue, only looking at Jyn with hard eyes. Cassian’s face was carefully blank, focused on Leia’s grief.

Jyn might have felt jealous, but that was petty. Cassian was so unbearably compassionate. He would always pick the right thing to do over the selfish one.

It was part of why she loved him, after all.

“Yes, I can teach you,” Jyn said. She spread her hands, looking at the twins as though to say _you took me then and this is what I am, you know that_ , “Might not be the one you want, but I’m the one you’ve got.”

She looked at Luke. “You once said we could be friends, didn’t you?” she said, her throat closing, and tried to sound confident, like she was making a deal with strangers and not the friends she desperately wanted back.

“Why?” Luke said, “Why do you want to teach us firebending?”

“If you didn’t hear me the first time, the Fire Lord is going to burn the Earth Kingdom down on the day of the comet,” Jyn said. She tempered her next words when Leia nearly growled. “I have the power to make it right.”

 _Oh Bodhi._ She fell silent and kept her face impassive.

“She’s telling the truth,” Chirrut called, from where he was unpacking the supplies.

“So, she’s not a liar, what an achievement,” Han muttered.

“You’re missing the big picture,” Chirrut said calmly, “Luke and Leia need a teacher. The Avatar must master all four elements to end the War.”

“Not to mention, she saved our lives only hours ago!” Baze said, folding his arms, “And she’s promising us the chance to burn the Death Star and its master to the ground.”

Despite herself, Jyn smiled with all her teeth – an unkind smile. But she and Baze and Cassian understood each other in a way the heroes, the Avatar, did not want to. The twins were exchanging looks in that weird twin telepathy they had. Finally, they nodded at each other, Leia grumbling something under her breath. _Never change, Leia,_ Jyn thought, despite Leia’s anger at her.

“Neither of us want to learn firebending,” Luke said. “But we accept.”

The rest of the group looked at one another. Finally, everyone nodded. Some were reluctant. She could see the unease on Leia, and Han’s faces. Luke was unreadable, oddly. But Baze and Chirrut and Enfys seemed happy to have her back. Cassian’s face was soft. But there was a strange reservation, like he was hiding something.

It was as much as she was going to get.

“Well, let’s get dinner started,” Chirrut said cheerily.  
  


Leia spread out her things in one of the small rooms she’d picked out. Since the Air Nomads came and went, their living spaces were very simple. A large window looked out into the air, next to a mattress on the floor. There were some dusty alcoves, and boxes strewn about. Leia didn’t like the feeling of the place. You have the spiritual ability of a rock; Master Yoda had chided. Maybe so, but she knew there was pain lingering here, and she hated it. _This is your bloodline,_ they whispered.

Worse, she didn’t like how ghostly Enfys had seemed when they had arrived.

There was a rap at the door. It was Han. “Dinner’s ready,” he said. Leia nodded. Her fingers lingered on the tattered cloth of the blouse she’d worn in the Earth Kingdom. That felt a lifetime ago. In a way, it was. She had been dead, if only for a few minutes. What Cassian had brought back was fundamentally changed. “Leia?”

“When we were at the Palace,” Leia said. She looked over at Han. “Mon Mothma was there. We thought, we thought she betrayed us, she startled me – I started choking her!”

He sat down next to her, stretching out his legs. “I’m not a nice person,” she said.

“Are you crying?”

“No,” she said, sobbing. Han sighed, tugging her over gently so she was cocooned on his lap. Leia held the silver wing necklace so tight she was certain it would cut her palm open. She felt Han rub her hand, massaging the tension away.

“And who says you need to be a nice person?” Han said. “Who says you need to be sweet and forgiving and all-knowing? You’re not a murderer, you made a mistake.”

“Han, I tried to strangle someone because I thought they’d betrayed my trust.” She said the words meaningfully.

“Leia.” Han gripped her shoulders tightly and turned her to face him. “You are _not_ Vader. He was angry and paranoid, yeah, but you are not going to become him and fucking destroy everyone who looks at you funny or something. He killed _children_.”

She shuddered. _Monster_ … a word that Anakin had used. _Monster_.

“You need to talk to Luke.” Han pulled the necklace from Leia’s shaking hands. “Listen, I don’t think Vader can be redeemed. Maybe Erso can, but not Vader. Not the point. But he’s your brother, and like it or not, you have the same soul so because of funky Avatar magic, if he goes, you do too.”

“Thanks for the reminder, Han.”

The silvery wings shimmered in the dying light. “Luke loves you, Princess.”

“I can’t believe I’m getting advice from you,” Leia said, but she wiped the tears away and managed a small, teasing smile. Han scoffed, pressing kisses to the corner of her mouth, her lips, her jaw… She let herself melt into the feeling, forgetting the War for a moment. “Let’s put that silver-tongue to some better use.”

“Silver tongue, huh?” Han grinned roguishly. Leia shivered, falling into the feeling, as they kissed and kissed, Han’s long fingers unlacing her clothes.  
  


Cassian gave Kay’s harness a sharp tug. “Play nice,” he instructed.

The lizard huffed. He padded softly into the room and made the sweetest hissing noise at Jyn. He could see she’d arranged her personal items on the wooden ledge by the mattress. She looked different now, in a burgundy shirt, light leather armoured vest, trousers and boots. There were bracers on her wrists. Her upper arms and elbows were exposed, leaving bare the feathering white scars across her skin.

It was the first time he had ever seen her expose them willingly, and the affect was unapologetic. He admired that.

She looked over at Kay, furrowing her brow. “Cassian told you to come, didn’t he.”

“You should play nice too,” Cassian said, stepping inside.

Jyn’s mouth quirked. “I figured as much. I think he hates me.”

Kay gave a very pleased sounding hiss. Jyn glared at the mongoose lizard. _“Kay.”_

With extreme reluctance, the lizard rested his head on her lap. Jyn snorted, touching his snout. “You’re such an ugly scaly looking – he nipped me!”

“It’s a love bite, it’s affectionate,” Cassian said, controlling his face. Jyn raised an eyebrow. Two spots of colour appeared on her cheeks. _Oh_ , his body catching up with his brain.

They looked at each other, waiting for the other to make the first move. She had betrayed him once. He had betrayed her. “Nasty lizards aside,” Jyn said at last, rubbing the back of her neck. “I… It’s…nice to be back.”

They stared at the floor. Kay snapped at his ankles, giving him a long-suffering look.

 _Tell her._ Spirits, she had saved the entire Rebellion and he was even more stupidly in love with her than ever before.

 _¿Me amas?_ Do you love me?

He focused on what he had come here for. “Jyn, where’s Bodhi?”

Her face crumpled. The vulnerability was so raw that Cassian was half-afraid she would break. All thoughts of his own feelings fled. “They put him in prison…I… I only had eight minutes,” she whispered.

“You didn’t kill him,” Cassian said firmly, “You didn’t. You saved us, Jyn.”

“I couldn’t save _him_ , though,” she said. She was crying. “I just…I keep thinking he’s alive. That he got out, somehow.” She touched her chest. “I tell myself that I’d know, that I felt it, when Saw died…”

The world was a hungry place. But Cassian had not given up on hope. Hesitantly, Cassian sat down on the mattress next to her. “I will help you find him,” he said.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and held her until she fell asleep, making soft, hiccupping sobs.  
  


Luke wandered through the halls of Hynestia, the Western Air City. His clothes still smelt of ash and sweat from the failed invasion. Cassian had healed his superficial scrapes, but he was raw, peeled open. His father was preparing to destroy the world. Father, father, father, the walls echoed.

They whispered about him. They know what his father had done. How did you think this would end? they asked. Anakin Skywalker made his choices.

Now you must make yours.

Luke found himself in a large temple. He could see the beautiful steepled roof ascending up, or down, he supposed, since the entire city hung upside down, with geometric slits cut in intervals to let in light. Inside were an uncountable number of statues, spiralling upwards into the darkness. They were all made of carefully preserved wood. Luke approached the newest one.

It was Mace Windu. Younger here, a softness to his face that had not been there later in life. Luke traced the Southern Tribe sigils carved into Mace’s cloak, back when the Southern Water Tribe had stretched far past Alderaan’s glacier.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Luke jerked back. Enfys walked over, standing close beside him. Her footsteps were soft. “It’s the Avatar Cycle. My mother brought me to the temple in the Southern City, and told me all the stories she knew.”

Luke pointed to the statue to Mace’s right. An Air Nomad woman with a broad, flat nose and tight curls that haloed her face, in a short tunic over trousers. There were gauntlets much like Enfys’ on her wrists, and a circlet sat on her brow. “That’s T’ra Saa, isn’t it?” Luke said, “Your helmet…”

“It’s a stylized version of her hair,” Enfys said with a wondrous expression, touching the statue’s face. “They say she was a sight to behold, her eyes glowing, her hair spread out around her face, stopping meteors. She inspired our tribe to leave the Southern City and change our ways. She lived three hundred years.”

“Like you,” Luke said, “Not being three hundred, though you still look lovely for it.”

“Uh-huh,” Enfys said, now grinning. They continued to walk to the next statue. It was a masked figure in long dark red and black robes, no skin visible. “And that’s Avatar Revan, the last fire Avatar. She lived for two hundred and fifty years. In that time, she made quite a legacy during the Mandalorian Wars to keep their expansion at bay.”

“Trust me, I’ve met her,” Luke said, “The opinion on her is definitely…mixed.”

Enfys gave him a considering look. “The Avatar is only human, after all.”

They passed on. Another woman, a pale-skinned Earth Kingdom native with flowing coppery hair. On her statue was carved golden brown armour, and a green cape. “Nomi Sunrider,” Enfys said, “She’s an Earth Avatar, like you. Do you know, they thought it was her husband who was the Avatar? When he died, she breathed pure flame, and they realised their mistake. My mother said, she was calm and still as a great mountain – but filled with light, which she wielded in the Warring States Period of the Earth Kingdom.”

“They’ve all done so much.”

“To me, it’s a sad story that so many faced times of war.” She purpled beneath her brown skin. “For me, I want to leave this world better than I found it.”

Boldly, Luke took her hand. “You will.” He wanted very much, he thought, to kiss her. But he paused, another thought coming to him. “Have any failed?”

Enfys pointed to the Avatar before Nomi. The tan-skinned Water Tribe woman had hair of shimmering white, braided in complex patterns atop her head. The paint here was fading, after years without custodians to keep it bright. “Avatar Atris. She was a scholar, fascinated with the Spirit World. But there are stories that some of these Spirits were cruel and canny… she became their vessel to work through. The stories say she was redeemed, but the lesson was not to trust those who had no hearts.”

Luke shivered. She noticed his expression and said, “It’s not the full history, Luke. These are only morality tales for children. These were all people, and people are complicated.”

Smiling uncomfortably, he said, “Of course. Look, there’s another Air Avatar.”

Enfys frowned, but allowed the charade to continue. “Kerra Holt,” she said. The Avatar was tall, with dark skin and close-cropped hair. “My mother said she was warrior, who never backed away from any fight. She stopped the Fire Nation from waging world war. She was the one who started the Alliance of Four Nations!”

“The Fire Nation has tried to conquer the world before?” Luke said, looking more closely at his past life’s sharp, unflinching gaze.

“A thousand years ago,” Enfys said. She shrugged. “Guess it runs in their dynasties.”

Luke frowned. A pair of pale-skinned Fire Nation twins had been carved, wearing loose tunics and breast-plates, a more archaic form of Jyn’s own armour. “Twins.”

Enfys tapped her lips. “Vil and Dasariah Kothos. It was a thousand years ago, but I think there was one song about them. They died very young.”

She looked directly at him. “They were arrogant, and failed to see that they were infinitely more powerful together, than they were apart.”

Luke barely heard Enfys speaking as they reached another Earth Kingdom Avatar, an almond-eyed woman with ink-black hair tied into two tails beside her face. Satele Shan, Enfys was saying, who tried to hold the fragile peace between the resurgent Fire Nation and the other three Nations…Satele Shan who had failed to stop the World War breaking out… Water Avatar Celeste Morne who had bartered with malicious Spirits, the Rakghouls, and been consumed by vengeance and hatred…

“Well, who knows what is true,” Enfys said, seeing he was unfocused, “No one is alive anymore to remember. It's all become legend and myth how that Dark Age began. Maybe the Fire Nation today decided they'd bided their time long enough. But they never accounted for something.”

“And what was that?” he asked, sharper than he’d intended.

“A farmboy, and a princess, were born,” she said.

Luke turned away from the statues of all his past lives. “You mean, the Avatar was born.”

“No, Luke!” she said, touching his shoulder. “Don’t you see? Don’t you _see_?” She gestured to the hundreds of statues disappearing into the dark. “The Avatar is anyone. Orphans, scoundrels, criminals, Jedi, royalty, good and vile. That’s the point. What you bring to it, and what they, all these people, what they bring to you.”

Luke frowned. “Then why us? Why the children of Lord Vader? Why a farmboy?”

Enfys’ hair looked like fire in the sunset streaming through the windows. She paused, seemed to consider. “I don’t know,” she said, turning towards the sunlight, “The Fire Nation believes that only with power and fear can the world be changed. They built the Death Star because that's all they know.

“And they're wrong,” she said, her face sad as Luke smelt the ash and burning wood from Scarif, “I think it is the actions of us ordinary people, coming together, that is power that they can't even dream of. Love, and kindness, and hope - and anger, and justice, too - that matters. That will leave the world better than when we found it.”

Luke touched the ragged skin of his burnt hand. _I have the power to make it right,_ Jyn had declared.

“Your father…he meant a lot to you in showing you how to be good, didn’t he?”

Luke nodded. “You’re not alone, Luke,” Enfys said, “You don’t have to lean on ghosts to decide who you want to become.”

 _Monster_ … a word Anakin used. _Monster_ …

“I’m afraid,” Luke admitted. He took her hand. “But sometimes I think I can be brave.”

If he could not be brave for himself or for Anakin Skywalker, he could at least be brave for her, and for his family. She unclipped her cape and spread it out on the ground. The two lay down side by side. He tried to do her hair in the protective braids she wore to bed, but having one disabled hand made the task too difficult. Enfys laughed. “I can live without that fantasy,” she said lightly, and did them herself.

At last, Enfys fell asleep, her face pressed into his chest. Luke stared up at the ceiling, looking at the faces of the Avatars.

The world was changed from the old days. The Spirits were fewer, quieter, the great dragons and phoenixes and the mythosaur and the krayt dragon who could swallow the Moon were gone. Whole forests had been destroyed, mountains carved open. And he would have to make his place in this world his past lives had never known.

“Guess everyone wants to starve then,” Baze said conversationally. He stirred the cookpot. Chirrut sat next to it, turning a bowl over in his hands. “Chirrut?”

“I was wrong to despair,” Chirrut said, reaching out and finding Baze’s hand. “Jyn came back, if nothing else, Jyn came back.”

“Is that why you could not look at me before?” Baze asked, sitting down and running his fingers gently through Chirrut’s close-cropped hair.

“Baze…I,” Chirrut swallowed, “All is as the Spirits will it. So why, then…”

“You know, a wise man once said to me, *destiny is a funny thing. You never know how things are going to work out, but…if you keep an open mind, and an open heart, I promise, you will find your own destiny someday.*”

For the first time in a long while, Chirrut laughed. “Now he sounds like a wise man!”

“He’s obnoxious too,” Baze huffed. “I might not believe. But I have faith in what is right in front of me. These children are good. They will avenge Jedha.”

Chirrut found Baze’s cheek, smoothing a finger to where his lips were. “And they will save the world, _Xīngān_.”

“Maybe,” Baze allowed. He did not believe in the rebels and their cause, in their high-handed proclamations. But he believed in Jyn Erso’s war, in his own anger, and that would be enough. The Death Star and Director Krennic would die.

Chirrut kissed Baze gently. It was not perfect, Baze knew. They had lost dearly. There was time, thought, for one last insane fight. It was enough for him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) I've compressed and messed up the Old Republic/pre-prequels Star Wars timeline mainly because I'm not really a fan of how we know 25,000+ years of SW history. Some things are better left unanswered. And also because those years are pretty blank in SW (before the high republic stuff came out) so I had to draw from earlier time periods. 
> 
> 2) I've racebent Kerra, Atris, and Celeste (whose skin colours and features run from white to 'ethnic' depending on the artist). I semi-based T'ra Saa's appearance (the circlet) off the new main character (?) from The High Republic who is a white blonde just because I think her outfit is pretty (and stopping falling meteors is cool.) Satele Shan and Bastila Shan are NOT related here because that would be so weird to fall for the descendant of your own past life...
> 
> 3) Xīngān is supposed to mean darling (don't quote me, I don't speak Mandarin!).


	39. Book Three: Rebirth X

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we pick up some plot threads from Book 3 Chapter 5 on Dathomir.
> 
> Ah, Dathomir. I fucking hate it. I hate that sci-fi and fantasy writers love the trope of the ~evil matriarchy where the poor uwu men are oppressed by the evil (but extremely male gaze) women. It is both an erotic heterosexual male fantasy, and a fear that one day women will snap and take retribution (by doing what they do to us? gasp!). 
> 
> These kinds of societies never existed. There is no historical evil lady empire with thousands of male slaves. It's all male fantasy (to quote Margaret Atwood). Instead what you had, pre-agricultural revolution, were communities where women possessed rights and power, had control over their bodies and minds and lives, children were reared communally, and mother goddesses were worshipped. They were largely egalitarian. 
> 
> So I changed stuff. A lot of stuff. And that's that! I binged listened to [Safe Return](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9vQuF8a9jU) from the ATLA soundtrack. Enjoy.

Jyn woke with a start, rapidly trying to figure out where she was. She was lying on a straw mattress in a stone room. The early morning light filtered in through a low window. On the ceiling were carvings of circling sky bisons.

Slowly, her memory returned. Jyn sat up, taking in the small room in Hynestia, the Western Air City. Cassian and Kay were nowhere in sight. He had removed her bracers and her boots sometime after she’d fallen asleep, and left then. But there was a dent on the mattress from where he’d been. She could still smell him – and his horrible lizard – and she gave herself a moment to imagine a world where someone like her…

She hastily shoved the thought aside. Another, more pressing concern than her unrequited feelings had emerged. She was supposed to _teach_. Jyn buckled on her bracers and slid her boots on quickly. She combed her fingers through her hair, repining the bun, and set about finding Enfys.

It took her a surprisingly short time to get around: the entire city seemed to have been developed and built for easy accessibility, with lifts, railings, and maps everywhere. Enfys, after she’d shown Jyn her room, had said she was going to the temple. Jyn found her and Luke curled up on the temple floor, fast asleep.

Jyn crouched and poked her. “Wake up!” she hissed.

Enfys groaned, red braids falling in her face. “Jyn, it’s only dawn…”

“Enfys, I need your help.” Luke made a noise but continued to snore. Jyn pursed her lips. “I’ll make you those wheat pancakes with dates and honey you love,” she said in her sweetest voice.

Enfys cracked one eye open. “We don’t have honey or dates.”

“I brought a jar as a peace offering,” she admitted. There was a pause. With a groan, Enfys extricated herself from Luke’s arms, pulling her cape on. Luke made a little grumble and rolled over. Jyn refrained from commenting as Enfys trailed after her to the central atrium. Enfys was perfectly liable to turn it right back on her.

As Jyn got the ingredients out from her satchel on the war balloon, Enfys asked, “So, what’s the issue?”

Swallowing her pride, “How did you teach the twins?”

There was another long pause. “You didn’t think this through at all, did you?” Enfys said, covering her mouth with her hand. Jyn glared. “I’m not laughing, I’m not!”

“I hate you,” Jyn said, swatting the date jar away from Enfys’ grip.

“No, you don’t,” Enfys said happily, dipping one finger in the honey jar and licking it. Jyn crouched to light the cookfire. It took a moment for the flame to appear on her fingertips. She frowned, but Enfys continued to speak, refocusing her attention. “Well, for me it was simple – I just followed how I was taught by my mother and aunts and elders. I already had a lesson plan ingrained in me.”

Jyn shook her head, feeling her pulse race, though it had been a decade since Master Jorus had backhanded her to perform better. “That…is not going to work.”

Enfys’ face clouded over. She stood from her perch and began to help Jyn, brushing her hands against hers. “Well, then, start simple. Like how to produce fire. And go from there. Basic punches and blocks, you do that a lot, don’t you?”

“They’re called fire fists.”

“My mistake,” Enfys said, her eyes sparkling with mirth, “ _Fire fists_ and _fire kicks_ and _fiery-ness_ and _aallll_ that.”

Jyn bit back a smile, extending the plate with honey-drizzled wheat pancakes. “For her highness, the Queen of Mon Cala.”

Enfys immediately grabbed it, digging in with a moan of delight. “One of the few things from the Fire Nation worth saving,” she said, her mouth full of food.

“What’s the rest?”

“Don’t fish for compliments,” Enfys said easily, making Jyn grin. As Baze and Chirrut came in, Enfys added, “Just remember to be patient.”

“I am a beacon of patience.”

Enfys laughed. “I meant with yourself, Jyn. You’re doing something new and difficult. So be kind to yourself as you figure it out.”

She sighed, resting her head against her best friend’s shoulder. “And yet you won’t share your portion with me?” she asked, fighting down her own rising panic.

“You’re impossible,” Enfys laughed, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “Now eat up for your first big lesson, _Master_ Jyn.”  
  


Jyn stretched and popped out her muscles. She, Luke, and Leia stood in a beautiful courtyard of cream and white clay and wood. She imagined it must have been a communal space when Hynestia had still housed Air Nomads. She didn’t like dwelling on that too long. She could still feel… _something_ clinging to the place. Fire child, they whispered, stroking her face and hair, this is what your people did.

She would have preferred pure hatred, but she felt that was not their way. It would have been easier than guilt. Especially when she saw the sadness in Enfys’ eyes.

Jyn focused back on the twins. Both wore expressions of trepidation, Leia in particular throwing her suspicious looks. Jyn tried not to take it too personally. “Have either of you ever firebent before?”

They exchanged a look. “Once,” Luke said, shifting a little, “We… we burnt Cassian by accident.”

Multiple statements immediately became clear in Jyn’s head. She pushed aside her own empathy for Cassian – and her instinctive urge to get angry on his behalf. Cassian held no grudge about it. Patiently, she said, “Most firebenders accidentally burn themselves or others when they’re starting out as children. It’s…normal.

“Alright then, let’s see what fire you can produce,” she said, folding her hands behind her back. Keep patient. Don’t be like Master Jorus. Don’t be what the Air Nomads know you could be. The summer heat touched the scars on her arms.

Exchanging another uneasy glance, the twins sank into a low hot-squat, good form, and punched.

A puff of smoke came out.

“That’s it?” Leia glared. Jyn resisted the very powerful urge to groan. “Let me demonstrate,” she said. Her muscle memory was so honed that Jyn didn’t even need to think. She sank and punched, sleeves billowing.

She produced a tiny gasp of flame.

Leia began clapping. Jyn scowled. “Don’t patronize, you know what it’s supposed to look like,” she grumbled. Jyn punched again. She slid into various forms, again and again. Only wisps of flame. “What in the…”

“Maybe you were never as good as you thought you were,” Leia said, grinning slightly.

“Oh, you’re hilarious,” Jyn snapped, trying in vain to produce more flame.

“Maybe it’s the altitude?” Luke suggested, though he didn’t look convinced. Jyn stared at her hands. Her inner flame felt cold and dull in her chest, despite the sunlight pouring over her skin. Sól, give me power, she thought, but none came.

Her firebending was gone. Somewhere, she could feel Master Jorus laughing.

The group sat around the cookfire, eating and chatting. The summer days were long, Chirrut knew. He could still feel heat despite the dinner hour. Baze had passed him his bowl, their fingers brushing. He smiled, gripping Baze’s fingers momentarily and grounding them both.

He heard Jyn clear her throat to speak. “There’s…a problem. I’ve lost my firebending. Well, not lost…but it’s weaker now and I can’t figure it.”

Chirrut considered as he munched. Bending was inherently spiritual, something that many had now forgotten, preferring to use as a blunt instrument. Jyn had never struck him before as someone who wanted to look within herself.

“Maybe it’s because you changed sides,” Cassian spoke up. Chirrut’s seismic sense could feel Jyn immediately perk up and orient towards him. Oh, young love. “Your firebending used to come from anger and desperation. Now you have none.”

“So, what? We piss Erso off?” Han asked, poking Erso with his sword butt.

Jyn kicked him in the shin. “Cut that out! It’s not an option.”

“What you need is a new source,” Chirrut said. “And by that, I mean an old one. The original. For earthbending, the first earthbenders were the badgermoles. When I was young, I ran away and hid in a cave. A blind child was better off gone.”

He still remembered the pain and fear as he had fled Jedha’s orphanage, stumbling through the crowds of people out into the scorching, shifting ground he had learnt was sand. Finding his way into the Catacombs. Surrounding by the dead, as he imagined he would soon become.

The Spirits had other plans. There had been a great crunch of rock, and a soft, wet snout had nosed him. They had recognized him as one of their own. “The badgermoles are also born blind. I learnt earthbending as an extension of my senses. Earthbending is not a martial art – it is a way of interacting and moving through the world, and that is the form I taught Luke and Leia.”

The wonder he had felt as he began to feel the world expanding outwards beneath his palms and feet. The grubs and creatures that lurked beneath the desert sand. The hardy plants that nourished from the earth. The secret oases. The possibilities that had exploded to him. His only regret was that it was no help to non-benders and other benders, but Chirrut was nothing if not stubborn. He had tried to help them too, as a Guardian of the Whills.

“Firebending isn’t like that,” Jyn said quietly, standing up and pacing.

“But surely you must know who the original firebenders were,” Enfys said, “I learnt from my Tribe, but the first airbenders were the sky bison. That’s influenced our bending to use gliders to fly, to our culture!”

Jyn walked over to Chirrut. He felt the same turmoil of his childhood self, in her. “It won’t work. The first firebenders were the dragons, and they’re extinct. There’s no other way.”

Baze squeezed Jyn’s hand. “There is _always_ another way.”

Jyn was silent for a moment. When she spoke, he felt the vibrations. _There is something she is concealing._ “We’re not far from the island of Dathomir. The witches of Dathomir were said to be the first to learn firebending from the Dragons. They were killed off thousands of years ago. You still hear stories, but there’s no proof their society still exists. We might find something. Otherwise…”

“Sometimes the shadows of the past can be felt by the present,” Chirrut said. Several of the group shifted uncomfortably.

“We don’t have much of a choice,” Luke said, “Han, can we borrow the Falcon?”  
  


“You know, somehow I thought this ship would be a lot faster on calm waters,” Jyn groused from the bow of the Falcon. Luke shook his head at her attitude as he navigated the ship. He always enjoyed these moments of sailing out into the unknown, cresting over waves and dodging rocks and reefs. Han made it look easy, but he thought he had the hang of it just as well. Beside him, Leia was reading some story scroll. Threepio was nibbling at Artoo’s white fur. The polar bear dog snoozed with one eye open, keeping watch for anything in the water. “How does his bear even help to pilot this thing?”

“Some animals are special,” Luke said, winking at the overly-intelligent white dog, “Like Artoo and Threepio. They’re our animal guides.”

“Chewie’s guiding Han to the nearest pile of gold,” Leia said under her breath with a laugh. Jyn snorted. She lay down on the deck, seeming to ponder something.

“So, how did you burn Cassian?” she asked.

Luke tried to block the memory of Cassian in pain. “Ben, the old man who died at the North Pole,” Luke said, his throat closing momentarily, “He didn’t want to teach us, but we pushed him.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“He didn’t think we were ready,” Leia said, rolling up her scroll. “That we weren’t emotionally mature enough. And he was right. I got impatient, I couldn’t control the fire. When Cassian tried to stop me, I got…angry.”

“It wasn’t just you,” Luke said, touching his sister’s shoulder. She looked up at him, her eyes shining. “Ben called it a burning curse.”

Jyn sat up. She was rubbing her forearms, where Luke could see her scars. “Is that all? What melodrama!” she snapped. “Eight-year-old beginners make the same mistakes! And you’re under pressure from some old fart with emotional baggage.”

“You don’t understand,” Leia said, “Anger is, there’s Vader…”

“Yes, and building superweapons, studying rocks, and being emotionally neglectful is in my family,” Jyn retorted. “Having a messed-up family doesn’t make you what you are. I met your father, in the Fire Nation. He was a selfish asshole who only cared about what he wanted. That doesn’t seem like you.”

Luke flinched. “You didn’t like him.”

“He’s a tyrant,” Jyn said, looking like he’d sprouted a second head, “Anyways. It’s where you put the anger. Who you put on. Honestly, for the Avatar, you don’t give yourselves much credit for being ordinary kids.”

It occurred to Luke then that Jyn was trying to be nice. A blunt and unrefined niceness, but sincere nonetheless. “Thanks,” Leia said, slowly unclenching. Cautiously, she held out the scroll. “Want to see how Lelila’s journey ends?”

“No,” Jyn said, already crawling over to read the scroll together.

“Hmm, might want to look into that emotionally unavailability,” Leia murmured. Jyn grunted.

Luke turned his eyes to the horizon. They continued the journey in amicable silence.  
  


Dathomir was an island of red sand and soil. They docked the Falcon on a bloody strip of beach. Walking through the stunted-looking trees and boulders, Jyn got the odd sense they were being watched. Hanging from the gnarled branches were pods made of woven cloth. Artoo sniffed them inquisitively, then grimaced. The twins reached towards one, but Jyn grabbed their hands. “Don’t. The Dathomiri, seems they practice sky burial like the Air Nomads.”

They kept a wide berth from the bodies, swaying lightly in the wind. The bright sunlight reflecting off the ground made the air glow. Jyn could not shake the feeling they weren’t alone. These women had not died kindly. Jyn wondered who had been responsible.

Soon, they reached some kind of temple carved into a tall rock face. A red jewel was set in the centre of the entablature, the carven piece sitting atop the capitals of the columns. “It looks like the old temple on Coruscant’s hill that burnt down,” Jyn said thoughtfully. The twins exchanged an odd look. “What?”

“Oh, nothing. Just learning about architecture,” Luke said. Jyn frowned, but didn’t ask further. They walked closer to the temple. The columns were carved into the rock face, sealing off the entire thing. Jyn lingered on one carving. It depicted a female figure encircled by flames from two dragons. She’d seen dragons like that before, in the shrine beneath the Coruscant temple.

 _I think it was her bending I first fell in love with,_ the story had said.

Leia came up beside her, “That doesn’t look very spiritual.”

Jyn kept silent, staring at the dragons. Serpentine creatures, all neck and tail with slightly unnerving, intelligent faces. Sharp wings extended from their backs. “Myths get distorted over time, something as old as this. We don’t even know where the Avatar came from, why this?” Jyn said off-handedly. “The dragons died out long ago. Some say Palpatine killed the last one. Glory-hunting.”

The twins looked horrified. She walked hurriedly towards the temple. The doors were sealed shut, despite them pushing together. “It looks like the locking mechanism activates when the sun hits the jewel just right,” Luke said. “Probably the solstice, but that’s already passed.”

Jyn snapped her fingers. “We need something reflective.”

Leia unhooked a winged necklace from her throat. Jyn held it for a moment. Her kyber necklace was long gone. That lifetime was over. Then she knelt and cupped the metal towards the sun. A little more, a little more…

The beam of sunlight struck the jewel dead centre. With a crunch, the mechanism inside forced the doors open. It operates very cleanly for something centuries old, Jyn thought. She unclipped her tonfas.

“You know, Jyn, despite what everyone says about you, you’re pretty smart,” Leia said. Jyn smiled. Then the other shoe dropped. _“HEY!”_

She heard the twins laughing as they ducked into the old temple. Despite herself, Jyn kept grinning. Who knew the Avatar could be such a brat? She had never had younger siblings before. Maybe this was why Cassian loved them so.

The interior was cool and dark. It was a welcome relief from the summer sun. Several statues were arranged in a circle. They were made of carven stone, in a blocky, simplified style. All were women, wearing long sleeve tunics and trousers, with elaborate belts decorated with plaques. “They look like they’re dancing,” Leia said, “Is it some kind of firebending ritual?”

It was nothing Jyn had ever seen. Firebending favoured powerful feet and hand strikes, with deeply extended movements. It was aggressive and vengeful. This was… It looked like the carvings she had seen in the hidden Coruscant shrine. There were still the powerful strikes, but they seemed more serpentine. More agile, and quick. Breaking the root of a stance was a key tactic in defeating a firebender: with the ability to shift fast where power was needed, this weakness could be lessened. The statues moved against each other’s movements in perfect time, blocking where the other struck, it looked like –

_I think it was her bending I first fell in love with._

Threepio fluttered over to the inscription and squawked, “Dancing Dragon!”

“Your parrot can _read_?” Jyn said, welcoming the snideness from her own inner commentary. Leia shushed her, giving the pompous-looking creature sunflower seeds. Jyn made eye contact with Artoo, who rolled his eyes.

Luke stepped in front of one of the statues. He pulled his right foot, and arms up to mimic the pose. There was a click beneath his feet. “Looks like I found the trick,” Luke said, grinning. “Leia, you mirror me. Jyn, you can start from the other side.”

“I don’t like dancing.” But she stepped into position on the opposite end of the circle. Leia stepped directly in front of her brother, linking hands with him. In perfect harmony, the trio began to copy the Dancing Dragon. Under their feet, pressurized tiles clicked. Half-formed, in Jyn’s mind, _this is trust._

At last, they reached the final move. Their fists touched. The three looked at each other, breathing heavily. Leia cracked a smile. She looked younger for it. Slowly, Jyn and Luke mirrored her. There was a hissing noise. They turned. A pedestal was rising up from the floor. On it lay a gold egg.

“Wait, Jyn, don’t touch it! I have a bad -”

Too late. From the temple door poured a dozen women. Their faces ranged from pale as her, to olive, to dark. Many were tattooed, or painted for war. Like the statue women, they wore red tunics and quilted pants, decorated with metal plaques. Some had conical hats, decorated with those same metal plates. They were heavily armed with bows and arrows, swords, and fire. In the centre was an older woman with a sharp nose and tattooed cheekbones. Her hair was shaved.

 _"You?"_ Leia said. "Asajj Ventress? But she's dead -"

She stopped short as the bald woman placed a blade directly under chin.

“Looks like we've caught ourselves some spies," she hissed.

“We’re not spies!” Jyn said again, “And we don’t work for Palpatine. We’re here to learn the origin of all firebending!”

They had been taken to what must have been the Dathomiri village now, away from the oppressive ruins. Instead, there were simple wood and stone houses decorated with golden carvings of animals and warriors. Richly irrigated fields stretched out before them. Jyn could see women, some with children strapped to their backs, planting the next harvest. A group of women dragged a downed hippo cow towards a communal cooking space. She saw other groups making art, textiles and pottery, calling at little girls running around barefoot. Other women watched from mounted dragon moose. They dressed comfortably, in trousers or loose robes with split skirts. Some even had a breast exposed without shame. What was most stunning to Jyn was that every person in the village was female. Some were definitely not Fire Nation. Many of them had slave brands, including their leader.

She would have called it peace itself, if not for their leader spitting in her face.

“Little liars,” the leader snarled, “You’re here to finish what Sidious started!”

“Yeah? Why do you call Palpatine Sidious, anyways?” Jyn snapped. It was only a second, but Jyn knew that look.

Guilt.

Then the woman produced a flame from her palm, holding it near Jyn’s face. “You’re an arrogant thing. And you brought a man here, without our permission.”

“I apologize,” Luke spoke up, “We did not know the Dathomiri lived. I would not have come where I was not invited. My sister and I, we’re the Avatar. Please, hear us out.”

The woman’s eyes drifted over to the twins and then back to Jyn. “Talk. You have one minute to defend your case before we feed you to the rancors.”

Jyn sucked in a breath, choosing her words as carefully as she knew how. “My name is Jyn Erso, of the Fire Nation. I’m trying to teach the Avatar firebending. There’s a shrine under the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, and it lead me here. It told me firebending was something that could be good, and – well, there’s a fucking war going on! The world’s gonna be burnt down! What are you waiting for!”

The woman raised an eyebrow. _Well, fuck._

Then, she raised her hand. The warriors lowered their weapons and fire. “I appreciate your idiotic honesty. So, you want to learn. The way of the sun is taught only by two: Delphyne and Sybaris. You’ll present yourselves to them, and they’ll judge you. You fail, you die.”

“So, our options are being eaten by rancors, whatever those are, or maybe succeeding and dying anyways?” Jyn said. The woman folded her arms.

"Take your pick, Avatar. And annoying friend."

The twins looked at one another. Squaring their jaws, they nodded. Brusquely, she cut their bonds. “Get moving, Erso, Avatar. I’m Mother Asajj of the Nightsister Clan.”

Artoo growled at Asajj. The woman muttered something about pesky pets following her from the grave. Trailing after Asajj and her guard, they were led to a large hearth in the heart of the village. Inside burned the hottest fire Jyn had ever seen. It was hard to look directly at. Women who appeared to be priestesses drew aside, forming a path for them. They watched with suspicious eyes. “The first fire given to us,” Asajj said, “By Sól herself. You will present a piece to the Masters to judge.”

She was bending out a piece of its flame, but Jyn was stuck on her phrasing. _Herself?_ The Spirit they prayed to in the Fire Nation was male. She thought of the statue hidden beneath the temple. A female Spirit, a power, primordial mother. _This nation is sick,_ Mon Mothma had told her.

Asajj extended three tiny flames. “You make the flame too small, it dies,” Asajj said severely to the twins. Luke and Leia accepted with trepidation. She glanced askance at Jyn. “Too big, and it will lose control and devour you and everything in its path.”

The twins cupped their flames. As the fire crackled, the fear melted across their faces. Now, Jyn could believe that they were only twenty. Jyn took her own. The warmth pulsed gently between her fingers. Thudding like a soft heart. Jyn had never thought she’d feared her own element.

But maybe a part of her had always cringed from it. Since she had set the field of Lah’mu ablaze. Since Mama had died. It warmed her face, fit between the broken cracks of her being. This is my birth right, she thought. This is how we will heal.

“The cave of the masters is up there.” Asajj pointed towards the peak of the extinct volcano. “Climb the stairs and present yourselves to Delphyne and Sybaris. Good luck,” she said in a sing-song voice, “You’re going to need it.”  
  


The hike up the side of the volcano was arduous. The trio took shifts riding on Artoo two at a time. Threepio flew overhead, too frightened of the fire to ride on Leia’s shoulder. Well, it was better than him fretting in her ear all day. Her feet ached. How quickly she’d lost the tough calluses from their journey across the Earth Kingdom!

Her attention was fixed on the fire between her fingers. With every pulse, she remembered the power she had felt on Ilum. The rapture of that fire. The way it had blazed out around her. Just like it bent to her father’s will, like a murderous hound.

The way Cassian had screamed as she nearly scarred him permanently.

“Your flames are going to go out.”

Leia looked up from where she was riding Artoo. Jyn was kicking aside foliage to clear their path, easily holding the flame in one hand without care. Leia pursed her lips. In front of her, Luke was struggling too to keep his flame going. “And what if it goes wild and burns this whole place down?” Luke said.

Jyn turned back around. Her face softened. “You learnt three elements in less than a year. You two are talented kids, and you know better now. I know you can do it.”

“It’s hard, with the burn.”

“So practise more.”

Jyn said it matter-of-factly, no pity to be found.

She felt the tension in her shoulders ease a little. She remembered the night in Jedha when she had threatened Jyn’s life. The way they had laughed and sparred together in the house in Mon Cala.

Those careless days were lost, now, since she had died and come back. But perhaps there was something, tender and fragile, that could be born in its ashes.

At last, they reached a flat platform on the top of the mountainside. There were several carven statues, freshly painted, at the four corners. There was no time to examine them. Asajj and the Dathomiri were already there, walking towards them. It didn’t surprise Leia, given that they had proper mounts. The woman almost looked disappointed they’d made it. Leia resisted the extremely childish urge to preen.

A series of stone steps rose up from the platform, dizzyingly high. There, was a long bridge between two caves. The sun was setting. It dripped across the sky like a wound. The angles of Asajj’s face were even sharper as she approached them. “Up there are the Masters’ caves. Walk up, present your flames. Avatar to the left cave, Erso to the right.”

“And then?” Luke asked sharply.

Asajj folded her arms. “Then, they decide if you three bratty kids are worthy.”

“Dinner for the masters,” one woman laughed.

“Quiet, Teneniel.”

Dinner? Leia mouthed at Luke and Jyn. Jyn tapped her tonfas meaningfully. Leia grit her teeth. She and Luke were the Avatar. Jyn was dangerous fighter, even without her bending. They could take these masters. Living in caves all the time had probably made them as bizarre as Master Yoda. She hoped.

Asajj reached to Jyn’s flame and plucked an ember. It grew larger in her pale callused hands. This was passed between multiple women. They bent spinning fire ribbons, fanning out into a semi-circle around the steps. The priestesses lit rolled leaves and blew smoke rings that made Leia’s head spin. Another women pulled a chalice, filled with a greenish alcoholic substance, that they were made to drink.

The trio began to climb. Slowly, achingly, towards the top. The sky was orange-gold when they stepped onto the narrow bridge. It lit Luke’s straw hair, the flecks of brown in Jyn’s eyes. There was power here, thrumming in the air. I am a child of the Sun as much of Earth, Leia knew. Truth, Master Yoda had said.

It was time to meet her destiny.

Obeying Asajj, they turned back-to-back. The twins to the left cave, Jyn to the right. Below, the Dathomiri began to sing. A high, piercing call of something…other. She could hear the wail of reed-pipes and the stomp of feet. Her flame began to wane. “Where are they?” she hissed to her twin.

Then the entire volcano _shook_.

The fire in the twins’ hands went out. “Jyn!” Luke hissed. She whipped around angrily, her own flame dissipating. They stared at each other in total horror. Threepio and Artoo began to make panicked noises.

There was another earth-shaking movement.

A _screech_.

Then –

Leia’s scream caught in her throat.

_Dragons._

One red as blood, the other blue as the clearest seas. They burst out of the caves, flying in circles around the bridge. Head as tall as a house, eyes big as melons. Their wings near blotted out the sky. Leia fought back a scream. The wind from their wings was so strong. Jyn stumbled backwards, her eyes wide. They were primal, otherworldly. Each opened their mouth and called out, high and piercing.

For the first time in centuries, the sunset sky sounded with the music of dragons.

“These are the masters,” Leia whispered.

Luke’s eyes were blown wide. “I think…we should do the Dragon Dance.”

“Are you out of…” Jyn began. Luke shushed her. “They want us to do _something_.”

She trusted her twin. Leia turned and looked at him, really looked at him. Luke was in pain too. She reached forward and clasped their hands together. “Even if we fail,” she whispered, “I’m glad that we got this lifetime.”

Luke smile was so gentle. “Me too.”

They danced. And with every strike, every bend, the dragons followed. _This, **this** is trust._ My father is no dragon, no Sun Spirit, Leia thought. Oh, father, grandmother…

Their fists met in the final form. Jyn looked at them, fear now visible.

Those intelligent, serpentine faces watched. The dragons hovered. Their fangs glinted in the golden light. Leia tried desperately not to think _dinner_.

There was a crunch as the dragons settled onto the bridge. It was time for judgment. Leia swallowed as their yellow eyes watched. Their mouths opened, heads tilting back, and fire burst forth.

The group cried out at the enormous heat –

A thousand colours. Blue, green, red, gold, purple, white. Colours without names. The fire rose up in a whirlwind around them, a thousand feet in the air, never touching or harming. It swirled and shimmered, like a hundred, hundred thousand kyber crystals. Jyn’s hair whipped in the wind, Leia’s sleeves. And now Leia knew what Anakin had never been able to see. This… Leia gasped, _this_ was Sól come again. There was no heat, no pain. No rage or fear. Only…

Balance.

All the years seemed to slide off Jyn Erso’s tired face. Tears glittered gold in the corners of her eyes. In a voice of gentle wonder, she breathed, _“I understand.”_

And then the dragons were gone, soaring back into their caves.  
  


They walked slowly back down towards the Dathomiri. “You knew Master Kenobi, didn’t you?” Luke said. Jyn was perplexed. Asajj said nothing, only looked wary. “He thought firebending was a curse. And after we burnt our friend… and met our father… I thought the same thing.”

“But it was harmony, up there,” Jyn whispered. She felt warmth coursing through her blood.

“Obi Wan and his Jedi, Palpatine and his acolytes,” Asajj’s face grew bitter. “It’s the easy answer: good or evil. Hate or emptiness.” She glanced over at Luke and Leia. “I would think she’d know that at least was wrong, water girl. Your Moon and Ocean.”

Jyn remembered that beautiful green oasis in a land of ice and snow, the altar glittering with kyber like frozen tears. There she had fought Cassian for the first time. The two cods that swirled eternally, unconcerned with the affairs of mortals. Push and pull. _Mirrors_. “This island,” Luke said, “It feels like that too. You live with your dead. Life and death, growth and decay, peace and action…”

“You’ve certainly inherited your first master’s melodrama,” Asajj said dryly, “Fire is destruction. And light, and life. It’s not a curse. Humans wouldn’t have crawled out from the swamps or sea or wherever without it.”

She gestured towards what one of the four statues. Now Jyn knew what the statue in the hidden Coruscant shrine was. It was Sól.

She had three faces. A horned face. A winged woman. And…

“Balance,” Luke said. She saw the same in the other three statues: the Moon and Ocean’s eternal dance, the sky and night mothers of the Air Nomads, the great green of Mother Mangrove, both death and rebirth inside of her.

_I think it was her bending I first fell in love with._

She could feel the warmth in her blood growing. The heat pooled through her energy pathways. One day, Jyn knew, she would let go of everything that blocked her chakra points. Perhaps the Avatar would too.

She lifted her hand and struck. Beside her, so did the twins.

From their fists burst flame, strong and true. And in the edges of Jyn’s own fire, she saw, just for a moment, a thousand colours, and the music of dragons.

_Coda._

The meal was wonderful. They sat around the large firepit. Everyone had a plate, little children running underfoot. The animals dozed or begged for scraps. Women were laughing, and telling stories, kissing and playing with the children. Leia was speaking to one of the woman, while Luke played peekaboo with one of the children. Even Artoo and Threepio looked content. “I can’t believe the Dathomiri still exist,” Jyn said, “You all have to be the precursors to the Fire Nation. What happened?”

Asajj gave her sceptical look, ripping off a piece of meat with her teeth. “Now, isn’t it obvious in a Nation that once decreed ‘any woman who speaks out of turn shall have her teeth smashed with a brick’?” Chewing on the meat, she said, “Course, I can speculate. We probably had to flee from your new, _enlightened_ society until only Dathomir was left. Myths change. And if you can control the story, then you can shape the whole culture.”

“The Spirits left them,” one of the Dathomiri women laughed, “None of them has seen Sól in thousands of years! Our last priestess told them so, _the ghosts are quiet, the voice is stilled. It is over._ And the Fire Lord killed her. But we have the dragons.”

“The last dragons,” Asajj said bitterly, “Until that egg in the temple hatches. _If_.”

Jyn thought of the bones she had found in the hidden shrine. “Then what happened? Who are you all now?”

Asajj drank. “Us? We were slaves, girl.” The slave brand on her neck had faded into a dull pink. At her words, several women touched their lips and then their chests, a gesture of remembrance. “There’s native Dathomiri, but we’ve got plenty of runaways from everywhere.”

At Jyn’s face, Asajj said, “It’s witches, or abuse, slavery, forced marriage, and harm. Which would you choose?”

Jyn looked at over the village. She thought of Liya, and Gerel. How wonderful it would have been for that little girl to run free through the fields instead of in fear of men from Jyn’s nation, and from her own.

“You could live here.” She looked up. Asajj wasn’t looking at her. “No men here to use you. Discard you. Never again.”

There was a lump, suddenly, in her throat. “Thank you,” Jyn said, “For the offer.”  
  


Asajj led them towards some homes in a rocky valley over-looking the sea. “There are homes here. Teneniel, are the rooms ready?”

“Yes, Allmother,” the red-head said, nodding. Luke noticed that she wore a crest with a mountain on it, while Asajj had a moon. She smirked at Luke, eyeing him up and down, “Private room, just for you. 'M Teneniel Djo, of Singing Mountain Clan.”

“Uh…right, thank you very much Lady Teneniel,” Luke said, as polite but dispassionately as possible. Asajj gave the woman a look, who slunk away with a laugh.

“You and red-heads,” Leia snickered. Luke sighed, but he was glad for his sister’s teasing. He had missed it.

Luke opened the door of the house. It was simply furnished, but the carvings on the walls showed clear labours of love. He felt a deep sorrow for the women who had been murdered, leaving this behind. Leia and Jyn began to unpack their sleeping mats.

Asajj was still standing in the doorway. Luke joined her as they walked out into red sand. “How did you survive? Ben, Obi Wan, he told us about you. That he…”

He trailed off. Asajj gave a smile with all her teeth. “Got me to a healer in time. Obi Wan isn’t a medic, you know.” She eyed him. “You’re Skywalker’s son, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Luke said. “And you were an assassin.”

“Yes,” she said frankly, “I was. I was good at it too, boy.”

“And now you’re here. Leading your people back into greatness.”

She snorted. “I’m keeping us alive. I keep the dragons alive. And every day I spit in the direction of Coruscant at Palpatine for thinking he could wipe us out.”

She turned back to look at the horizon. “Ben watched over me when I was growing up. He was the one who convinced me to start my journey.”

Asajj looked onto towards the night sky. From where he stood, Luke could not see her face. In a cold, disinterested tone, she said, “And where is he now?”

“He was killed. Saving the Water Tribes and the world.”

Luke watched her, seeing the broad shoulders hunch. Love was a strange thing, he thought. “How poetic,” she said, trying to mask her voice with scorn, “A firebender dies to save the Water Tribes. A redemption.”

“Before he died,” Luke said, softer, “He said your name.”

Now she turned. He expected the rage of the firebenders. Instead, something, almost half-afraid, crossed her face. “My name?”

Her confusion moved him. Luke only nodded, gently. Feeling strangely whimsical, he bowed. He had found, for the moment, an answer. “Goodnight, Allmother.”

He walked into the house. Behind him, Ventress watched the sea. She spat towards Coruscant and laughed, wiping her eyes. Then she turned and walked towards her people. In the distance, she heard the song of the dragons, and the whisper of her name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) The law Ventress gives (of a woman having her teeth smashed with a brick) is one of the earliest known codes of law from 2400BC in Mesopotamia. 
> 
> 2) The story of the priestess telling the Fire Lord that the Spirits' voices are gone is based off the claim of what the last Oracle of Delphi said before the Temple of Delphi closed. 
> 
> 3) Teneniel Djo originated in the Legends book "The Courtship of Princess Leia" which is just an absolute trainwreck, incredibly sexist, and everyone being wildly out of character. I shed no tears of it being ejected from current canon. But I love her daughter (questionable love interests aside, sorry Jacen), so...she gets a cameo!


	40. Book Three: Rebirth XI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which there are hijinks. Fellas, is it very bi of Han to rescue his ex-boyfriend from prison? Listen, if you've watched the Solo movie...those two had a thing at some point after Qi'ra left Han. 
> 
> 1) Two lines of dialogue taken from the ATLA episode Boiling Rock Part 1. The first because I think it's so silly it's definitely something Bodhi would say, and the second because it's an iconic ATLA meme. 
> 
> 2) Because the clones were just regular teens brainwashed and used by Palpatine, there's no reason they wouldn't have women. So I've genderbent the clone character that appears here because I like morally conflicted/ambiguous ladies, sue me.
> 
> Content warning: racism, medieval prisons (?)

Han was listening with half an ear as Erso poured out tea. It was a quiet night at the Western Air City. Both Luke and Leia looked sweaty from another day of Erso yelling at them to punch harder and produce more fire, worse than his old sergeant as a cadet. After that, Chirrut had put them through the paces of more earthbending training. Han absently moved a strand of hair stuck to Leia’s sweaty neck. She grunted in response and continued to lie on her stomach, face on Artoo’s belly. Han grinned to himself. He would admit he loved watching her when she was bending four elements like some kind of wrathful Spirit, but grouchy Leia was funny to bother.

“It’s nothing on Bodhi’s tea,” Erso was saying, smiling – wonders would never cease! – “But I tried my best. He also had a really bad tea joke.”

“Let’s hear it,” Chirrut, Baze, and Luke said at the same, then laughed. Han rolled his eyes behind his cup. It was some kind of black tea boiled in water and milk. Not bad. Nothing on Bodhi’s though. Han sighed to himself, hoping their resident soft-hearted anxious wreck was alright. The only people less inoffensively adorable than Bodhi Rook are probably babies. Erso refused to speak on the subject.

“*Well… I can’t remember the start,” Erso continued to her audience, “But the punchline was ‘ _leaf_ me alone, I’m _bushed_.’*”

“I don’t think that’d be funny even with the punchline,” Han said, as the three stooges cackled to themselves. Enfys looked up from the dusty papers she was reading, documents she’d rescued from Hynestia’s ruins, to roll her eyes at him. Pleasant enough – for a traitor. Erso’s face fell as she saw Cassian was distracted by maps and papers in front of him. Taking pity, Han spoke up, “Whatcha got there, Cassian?”

“A lot,” he said absently.

“Do tell me more,” Han said. When Cassian didn’t respond, Han reached over and poured the tea onto Cassian’s lap. Cassian nearly yelped. Kay leant over, trying to lick it. Cursing, Cassian waterbent the tea off and flung it at Han’s face, who ducked it with grace. Well, graceful for him.

“Remind me again why we’re friends,” Cassian muttered.

“I’ve got charm,” Han shrugged. Chewie snickered to himself behind him.

Feigning deafness, Cassian turned to the group. “Bunch of things. There are other battles going on and we’re trying to pull troops for the battle directly against Palpatine. Plenty of people didn’t come for the Day of Black Sun. For them -”

“The most important battles are for their homes,” Enfys finished. Cassian nodded, pointing towards marked out locations across the Earth Kingdom.

"Sullust, Troithe, Mindor, Naboo, Cato Nemoidia - there's guerilla warfare going on over the Earth Kingdom. It’s good for us in some ways. Once the Fire Lord falls, those who don’t surrender to Mon Mothma are going to dig in and become warlords if we don’t get rid of them first.”

“Joy,” Baze said under his breath. Cassian continued, “Then we’re decoding breakdowns on the Death Star from Jyn’s scroll. And we’ve started ascertaining who survived the Invasion. And if those missing were imprisoned instead of dead.”

“Anyone we know?”

Cassian’s face grew haggard, exposing the premature wrinkles. He looked less like the technically decorated war hero after the Siege of the North, and more mortal. “The death toll is…not good. But we have confirmation Lando was imprisoned.”

“No!” Luke and Leia cried, at the same time Han said, “Lando…Lando made it out?”

Suddenly Erso’s tea tasted of bile. Han set the cup down shakily. His sword lay in his lap. Its presence felt foolish. Who was he trying to kid, playing General? Lando had done most of the leading. Lando had stayed behind and paid the price for having real responsibilities. Had risked his neck to save him from Jabba. Lando and him went way back – there was a corner of the Falcon he still couldn’t quite look at after some _activities_ back during the coaxium heist when Enfys was twelve – and now.

Leia squeezed his hand, kissing him gently. “We’ll get him out, Han,” she said fiercely. Han kissed her back, drinking in her big bright eyes, wishing he had all the power in the world like she did, and he could bust Lando straight out –

_Now, hang on a second there._

Chewie gave a nervous warble at his expression. Han told him _shut up, I always have great ideas._

“Hey, Erso,” he said, as the morose group finished dinner and began to head off to bed, “Can I talk to you?”

She frowned at him suspiciously. Han raised his hands, walking off towards the edge of the atrium. She and Chewie followed after. Han stopped near the edge, staring down at the thick layer of clouds. He envied Enfys, being able to fly. Erso folded her arms expectantly. “Where would they have been imprisoned?”

“It’s better that you don’t know,” Erso said, “Knowing will make it worse.”

She turned to go. Han scowled. “Listen, Erso. He’s my friend. I owe my life to him.”

“It’s not good, Solo.”

Gritting his teeth, _“Please.”_

Erso paused. Her shoulders tightened. Then, “If I tell you, you’d better not do anything stupid.”

“Me? Stupid?” Erso turned and glared at him. Sobering, Han nodded, the lie easy. Erso studied him, glancing over at Chewie, who only growled.

Edging away, she continued, “There’s a story. I’ve only heard rumours. It’s called Fortress Inquisitorius. Highest security prison in the Fire Nation. They say it’s a tower in a boiling lake, on the volcano of Nur. Its run by elite benders, the Inquisitors, and Imperial Intelligence.”

“Volcano of Nur?”

“Volcano coming out of the sea. It’s only stories. People taken by the Inquisitors don’t come back. But that’s my guess for a high-level war prisoner.”

Han nodded. Erso gave him another sharp look before stalking away. “You are so paranoid!” Han called after her. She made a rude hand gesture.  
  


Sneaking out was easier said than done. He, Luke, and Cassian all shared a large room, with Chewie sleeping on the floor. Luke had passed out immediately, but Cassian, stupid magic waterbender, had stayed up reading his papers and writing messages past midnight. Once he was certain Cassian was asleep, Han packed lightly. His sword, some picks, a dagger, food, and his personal map. He tiptoed past Cassian’s mattress. He’d explained to Chewie that there was no way he could smuggle a bear along. The bear had been instructed to warn the group if Han didn’t return in five days. Chewie had given him a big hug before that.

Han regretted leaving him behind already. Being on his own was _weird_. Carefully, carefully…

“Going somewhere?”

Erso dropped out of the shadows of the atrium. There was no point pretending. “It’s none of your business, Erso. I have to make this right,” Han snapped. What would Erso understand –

Okay, stupid. Erso probably understood perfectly. But this was Lando. Erso had never met him in her life. She wouldn’t get the history. Han didn’t particularly want to hurt her, but he rested his hand on his sword-hilt. She raised her hands, pausing.

He started towards the war balloon. Erso followed. “What are you doing?”

She raised a challenging brow. “I’m going with you.”

“I have to -”

“Die alone?” Erso’s eyes were hard. Was Erso, his former friend, _worried_ about him? Han swallowed uncomfortably. “You’re going to a prison of elite benders. What exactly is your plan? Wave your sword around like a big boy?”

“Erso,” Han said warningly. She gripped the war balloon’s basket.

“Keep at this and I’ll scream my fucking head off and wake everyone up.”

Han swore. “Fine. Get in the damn balloon.”

Erso leapt fluidly over the side, landing in a crouch. With a few quick punches of her odd, rainbow flame, the balloon rose. Soon, they had left Hynestia far behind.

Han had a bad feeling about this.  
  


Cassian found a scroll in the courtyard the next morning. He unfurled it for the curious group. The handwriting was messy but legible. “Need meat, gone fishing, back in a few days,” he read, “Jyn and Han?”

The group exchanged dubious glances. Cassian’s eyes narrowed.

“There’s a postscript. Luke and Leia, I’ve assigned homework for your firebending. Every time a badger-frog croaks, start with a hundred hot-squats. Then -”

 _“Homework?”_ Leia cried.

“Leia, if you’re reading this, I can hear you complaining.”

“She’s enjoying this,” Leia muttered, as she and Luke began the listed one hundred hot-squats.  
  


Jyn paced back and forth in the woven basket. She furled and unfurled the map, looking at their progress towards Nur. Solo was watching her restless fixation. Jyn turned and bared her teeth at him. He had been the most vocally against her presence. In Mon Cala, they’d been casual friends, him always keeping an edge away from her. Jyn wasn’t going to apologize for worrying about this stupid plan. 

“Missing the Fire Nation?” Solo drawled. Jyn flopped down next to the war balloon’s burner and massaged her temples. Being a selfless person who cared about your friends was _aggravating_. She could practically hear Bodhi cackling. She grunted, “No.”

“Huh. Didn’t have any friends there?”

Jyn shrugged. She thought uncomfortably of those final moments in the Scarif Record Facility. If Iden was gone, even Ciena… “It’s none of your business,” she said in a brittle voice. “Seeing as your best friend is a bear.”

“Chewie’s not a bear.” Jyn stared at him. Solo nodded sagely, waving a hand. “He’s a Wookiee. Bear-apes from the island of Kashyyyk. Closest living relatives of humans, highly intelligent, did you know that, Erso?”

“You’re having me on.”

“Am I?” Solo shrugged impressively. “Hey, not my fault you’re clueless -”

Jyn tried to kick him in the shin, but Solo dodged expertly. “I’d never have to tolerate this if Chewie were here,” Solo said.

“Must be nice,” Jyn said under her breath, leaning back against the burner.

Solo was oddly quiet. Then, “Guess so, since your friend is who? _Cassian?_ ”

Jyn bristled. “Cassian is a great guy! And there’s Enfys and Baze and Chirrut and…”

Then she saw how surprisingly kind Solo’s dark eyes were. Solo was teasing. Teasing meanly, but teasing. She relaxed her shoulders, shifting so she was facing him properly. “So…” Jyn drew out the word. “What’s our plan?”

“Oh, you know…”

“What do you mean, _you know?_ ”

“Listen, I’m making this up as I go.”

Scratch ruining the dynamic. Screw being a selfless person. Solo was getting kicked off the balloon. “You’re making it up? We’re breaking into a prison!” she tried to keep her voice out of the yelling range. “Is this normal? Do you all always do this?”

“Occasionally,” Solo said, completely insincerely.

“I spent weeks tracking and trying to predict your next moves! I thought you were master strategists, and you’re telling me this was all _sheer dumb luck?_ ”

“*Well, that’s rough buddy.*”

Jyn ground her teeth together so loudly Solo winced.

  
It was night when Jyn saw billowing steam. She woke Solo roughly. The volcano rose up from the ocean, belching steam, on the Northern tip of the Fire Nation. Jyn could feel herself begin to sweat. Some ancient hydrothermal system had blasted a geyser in the volcano, creating Nur’s boiling lake. Pumping more fire into the burner, the balloon crested through the steam. It was so thick. Jyn squinted…

From the whiteness burst the prison stronghold. A black tower rising out of the lake, narrowing to a point. In the moonlight, it looked like a blade. Its wide base split into two thick legs. In the windows at the top, Jyn saw torchlight glinting, like monstrous eyes. She prayed the steam would cover them.

“Hey, Erso…the balloon is sinking,” Solo hissed.

Jyn frantically pumped more fire. The mirror-surface of the lake drew ever closer. Deceptively clear. “The air outside is as hot as the burner. We can’t stay afloat!”

“I’m aiming us for the rocks – brace yourself!”

Jyn gripped the basket with white-knuckled fingers. They crested the lake, flinging up boiling spray. Droplets hit her hands. Jyn tasted blood as she fought not to scream. With a crash, the balloon hit the rocks of the base. They were thrown, landing in a heap. Jyn cursed as her palms and knees scraped open on the shore. Pushing herself up, she saw the balloon was broken beyond repair. “How are we going to get off – Solo!”

He pulled the remains into a pile. He began to push the balloon into the boiling lake, refusing to look at her. Jyn said, accusingly, “You knew it was a one-way trip.”

“Lando, my _friend_ , could be here! I never wanted you to come anyways.”

Scowling, Jyn joined him next to the war balloon. With their combined force, the balloon sunk into the boiling lake. Han looked over at her. Whatever happened, they were in it together, now. Now wasn’t the time to fight.

They turned and faced the monolithic Fortress Inquisitorius.  
  


“Hurry up, Erso!”

Jyn scowled as she continued to bind her breasts down. The process was uncomfortable. Her breathing was affected, and firebending, as she’d been taught over and over, came from the breath. This was absolutely not going to work. They’d successfully scaled the dark walls and broken in. Now they were trying to disguise themselves as the resident Purge Troopers. With the stifling heat soothed by rumbling fans, the soldiers’ armour was lighter and more exposed. Even with her breasts concealed, her height and any slip at looking under her tunic were going to immediately reveal her as an imposter. To say nothing of her voice.

With one last pull, Jyn yanked on the black and red tunic and armoured vest, shoulder pads, and bracers. She popped the helmet on and ducked out of the storage closet. Their clothes and weapons were hidden in a bundle behind some crates. “We meet back here in an hour,” Han said.

Jyn nodded and hurried off. It became quickly apparent that whatever was on the upper levels was not for the lowly Purge Troopers. Instead, the prison section occupied the bottom section on five floors, separated by sex. There was a communal mess hall for prisoners, another for guards, and a prison yard. She saw both male and female prisoners cleaning the floors as she passed. Before she could pause to look at the cells, she felt a heavy hand land on her shoulders. Jyn bit back a yelp.

“Coruscant sending us kids?” the guard scoffed. “Come on, newbie, I need you to collect a prisoner. Up to the coolers on detention level six.”

Jyn cocked her head. Looking at her like she was a yokel, the guard pointed upwards. Without much of a choice, Jyn pivoted and walked until she found a guarded lift. Swallowing, she said, in as a low a voice as possible, “Orders for the coolers.”

The guards shifted aside, placing their lit hands against the locking mechanism. With a crunch, the lift doors opened. Jyn stepped inside. Pushing the lever, the lift began to ascend, pulled by a winch. Jyn could hear herself breathing anxiously against her metal helmet. If they found she was a woman… Jyn fought to control her heart-rate. She found herself in a long corridor, dimly lit. From further on, she heard the sound of someone screaming. Oh, Han was a dead man.

She couldn’t turn back. The infraction would be reported. Jyn began to walk. Soon, she reached a large space. Several containers were attached to the walls. They were dragging a woman with silvery-blonde hair in a long ponytail, the rest shaved off, out of one. Ice covered her skin. Her lips were blue. In front of her was bald man with an awful, withered face. He wore loose black robes. Cold air hissed from the containers. “You need to learn some respect, Emari,” he said softly. He pulled a second woman from the containers, one Jyn recognized immediately.

Doctor Chelli Lona Aphra, the woman who’d abandoned them beneath Jedha to die. Jyn didn’t have time to process, for a voice spoke.

“That is enough, Cronal.”

The torturer flinched, scurrying back. From the shadows emerged a tall and imposing woman, in red military attire. The warden, part of Imperial intelligence? Not an Inquisitor, definitely. Maybe the original one had perished. Whoever this woman was though, Jyn did not like her overly calm, handsome face with mis-matched eyes. Cronal dropped back, his cold eyes watching. “Doctor Aphra, tried to pay off firebenders to escape,” she said coldly.

Aphr said through chattering teeth, “Now…that’s a bit of an exaggeration…Isard…”

Isard grabbed her chin, yanking it towards her. “Don’t be coy! You were staging a coup! No one’s ever escaped this wretched place on my watch. _Remember that._ ”

Cronal unlocked the chains, shoving Aphra towards Jyn. Jyn caught the woman as she impacted her chest. Pushing her back, she snapped her cuffs onto Aphra’s wrists, then the blonde woman. They stepped out of the torture chamber and into the corridor. Isard’s casual cruelty in torturing her prisoners was unnerving.

As they walked, Aphra continued to chatter. “Real piece of work isn’t she, old Iceheart Isard? Heard she had her father assassinated so she could inherit his position – then Palps sticks her in this dump, and now she’s - ”

The blonde woman sank to the ground and vomited. At Jyn’s disgusted face, Aphra said cheerfully, “Firebender in ice, not a good combination. Just incredible, the technology your magnificent nation is building, none of this fuddy-duddy, ‘oh, we’ve got to keep the forests preserved and the Spirits in museums’…”

Jyn pushed her towards the lift, blocking out Aphra’s chatter as they descended back towards the cells. She paused once they stepped out. She didn’t know their cell block numbers. Aphra smiled, looking remarkably at ease for someone in a grimy red tunic and trousers. “Emari’s in cell 2015, I’m in cell 2016.”

Grunting, Jyn deposited the blonde woman, Emari, first, leading Aphra to her cell. As she pushed the woman forward, Aphra seized her wrists. She slammed the door shut, wrestling Jyn onto the ground. Jyn lashed out, kicking Aphra off her. The helmet fell off as Aphra tackled her. Her breath was coming out in painful gasps.

“Hang on, I knew you were a woman, I felt your breasts, but you’re… you’re Andor’s friend,” Aphra said, still holding Jyn in a headlock as she fought to breathe. Jyn nodded as Aphra loosened her grip marginally. “Who’re you breaking out?”

Jyn sucked in a deep breath. “Get the fuck off me!” she snarled, “You left us to get eaten by a snake monster!”

“In my defense, I didn’t know it was a snake monster,” Aphra said airily, “Now…I could start yelling and got Director Isard involved, or, you could open that generous little rebel heart of yours -”

Now where had she heard that before. Everything always had to come around and bite her, didn’t it? Scowling, Jyn nodded. Aphra shuffled backwards, so that Jyn was awkwardly against her lap, one arm still loosely around her neck. “So…who are you here for? What’s the situation? Is Andor here? He’s such an absolute -”

“Shut up,” Jyn said, “We’re looking for a war prisoner. Air Nomad. Name’s Lando Calrissian.”

She could feel Aphra shake her head. “No Air Nomad prisoners here. But hey, you’ve got me, rogue archaeologist, master engineer, tough as nails -”

For the third time, Jyn interrupted Aphra, this time by driving her elbow into her solar plexus. Aphra let go, groaning. “Just keep your mouth shut and your head down. I’ll let you know when we’re going to make a move.”

  
Han hadn’t been by the storage closet. Jyn had been forced to take another heart-pounding walk around the prison, praying no one else brushed against her. She found him standing and watching the prison yard. “Nothing,” he said bitterly, “There aren’t any Air Nomad prisoners right now. And the only way off of here is a gondola between the Fortress and the outside world.”

Jyn didn’t know what to say. She placed her hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. Han took off his helmet and ran his fingers through his messy hair. “We came all this way for nothing!”

Jyn had never seen Han look so ruffled. His fingers were furiously working at the dark brown strands. “We can still get out of here,” Jyn said, thinking furiously, “We can get out and we can get to Coruscant with a stolen ship. Steal an airship, or find a sky bison, or…”

Han wasn’t paying attention. He was pointing to something in the yard. “Rex!”

Baffled, Jyn followed Han’s finger. She saw a brown-skinned man with dyed blond hair, a wide nose, and full lips. His face was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Maybe he had been one of the people at the invasion.

She felt though that it was something else, something she was forgetting…

  
“Jyn Erso? The one who _attacked Mandalore_ while trying to kidnap Luke and Leia?”

Rex was staring at Han in shock, arms folded. He looked thinner than Han remembered, but he had also been imprisoned since the spring. Han glanced over at the cell door, where Jyn was standing guard. He tried to plaster on a comforting expression. “Yeah, but weren’t you listening to my story? She saved all our lives at the invasion.”

“And you think she gets to join our side because of that?”

Han shrugged. “Listen. Jyn has done some messed up shit. I didn’t trust her. But she volunteered to come here to keep me safe. So. I’m gonna give her that chance.” Han sighed. “You don’t need to like her. But we’re not making it out of here without her.”

Rex was quiet, pacing back and forth in the cell. Something Han didn’t understand crossed over Rex’s face. He nodded sharply. “Fine. Two things. First, there’s another Mandalorian here.”

“Gregor and Wolffe?”

Rex squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Wolffe was killed during the destruction of Mandalore. No, it’s Lady Wren. Sabine’s mother.”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Han said, not sure what to say, “Okay. Yeah, we’ll rescue her too.”

Rex nodded. “Good. Second, do you have a plan?”

“Uh, I’m working on that.”

Rex groaned. “Where have I heard that before?”

“Hey, newbie! You’re not posted here!”

There was a sound of scuffling. Rex clamped down on his arm. Han shot him a furious look. Rex shook his head. Gritting his teeth, Han complied reluctantly. At last, they heard the sound of footsteps fading. “Why, I know you… Jyn Erso… you’re coming with us. Director Isard will be excited to see you.”

“Highest detention level is the top floor,” Rex hissed in Han’s ear, “If she gets imprisoned, that’s where they’ll put her.”  
  


Jyn had kept stubbornly quiet as the Intelligence agent interrogated her, a pale and smug-looking woman called Erisi Dlarit. This had earned her several kicks to the abdomen, and she hissed as the door reopened and Director Isard stepped in. She looked at Jyn’s cut lip and smirked. Isard crouched down and seized Jyn’s chin roughly, examining her coldly.

“Jyn Erso,” she said, “What a bounty there is on your head. When you’re really just nobody – except for what you might know.”

Jyn bared her teeth. “Then why aren’t I being shipped off to Coruscant, Isard? Not interested in collecting?”

“Oh, in due time, I intend to collect,” Isard said carelessly, “But first, there’s someone else who wants you more – and I intend to collect from him as well.”

“You’re trying to make a deal with Krennic?” Jyn laughed. She didn’t know whether to find her pathetic for trying to game a power system she could never win, or repugnant for how much she enjoyed it. “He’ll shoot you full of lightning before he lets you take credit for this. Face it, Isard, no amount of murdering daddy is going to make Palpatine look twice at your career.”

She felt Isard’s hand strike her face before she saw it. “Don’t talk back to me,” Isard said, eyes flashing, “Throw her in the coolers.”

  
It was Han who removed her from the coffin-like metal torture device in the morning. She lasted several brave steps away from the creepy torturer agent before she vomited and dry-heaved all over the floor. Then she turned and actually _grinned_ at seeing him. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Solo,” she said, a bit of bile and vomit still stuck to her chin.

“You okay?” he asked gruffly, checking her over. Her blue lips were swollen, and her cheeks were bruised. Jyn nodded. “Good. Don’t die on me, Erso.”

Jyn looked surprised. Han offered her a brusque pat on the back. When they reached her assigned cell, he quickly slipped inside after her. “Listen,” he said, “I heard something. There’s a new shipment coming in from Coruscant tomorrow morning. Traitors, criminals…war prisoners.”

“Could be Lando,” she said, rubbing her wrists as he removed the cuffs. She sat down on the thin mattress against the wall. Han groaned, taking off the helmet and sitting next to her. He said, “And if it’s not? They’re days away from shipping you off.”

At her expression, he said sharply, “I’m not leaving you behind, Erso, okay? No playing martyr on me.”

Jyn pursed her lips, flicking her fingers as her firebending began to return. “So, what are we going to do?”

Han groaned. “I’m no General, Erso. That was a joke. I’m just a dirt-poor smuggler. Better to quit than fail.”

“No.” Jyn grabbed his shoulder to face her. “Stop playing a fucking martyr. Failure? I know all about failure.”

“Real reassuring -”

“Could you shut your big mouth for one second?” Jyn scowled, “You can’t give up just because you’re running scared. I was scared. And I failed…” her voice shook for a split second. Then she steeled herself and glared at him. “You have to keep trying. You take the chances until they’re spent. Or what’s the point? Might as well lay down and die right there.”

Han was silent. He thought of how the Northern Water Tribe had burnt as the Falcon sailed away. He and Chewie had watched the fire dance across the ice. Luke and Leia had plunged into the oasis to merge with the Ocean Spirit and he had seen them rise up, eyes glowing. They had just done it, ran straight forward towards it.

“Rebellions are built on hope, huh?” he said, eyeing her sideways.

Jyn half-grinned. “Yeah. They are. Wise man told me that.”

“You mean the most judgmental ass I’ve ever met?”

“Hey, that’s one of my closest friends you’re talking about,” Jyn said, aiming one glowing finger at him. He swatted it, and she smirked.

Han laughed, despite the awfulness of this entire situation. “Okay. We stay one more day. In the meantime, we start figuring out how we’re busting five people out.”

“Six.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Six? You’ve made friends in prison already?”

“Yeah… about that…”  
  


When Lando stepped from the gondola the next morning, Han let out a long sigh, some of his energy returned. It had all been worth it. Lando looked thinner, his dark hair rumpled. The prison wear looked wrong on him. But he was alive, spitting in the guards’ faces as Director Isard introduced them to the prison. Proud idiot always enjoyed a show. Han winced when Isard shoved Lando to the ground, her boot on his neck. Iceheart, the guards in the mess hall told him, was known for her sadism.

“Under my father, we had one escapee,” she said, digging her heel in harder, “I intend to correct that failure. Don’t tarnish my reputation, _boy_.”

Lando looked up, glaring at the woman. “Such defiance. We’ll break that out of you.”

Han watched as they took the prisoners away, trying to plan. A quick check got him Lando’s cell number. As carefully as he could, keeping an eye out for guards, he unlocked Lando’s cell and shuffled inside.

Lando cried out and punched him directly in the gut. “It’s me, asshole,” he gasped, pulling off his helmet.

Lando’s eyes widened. “Han? What are you doing here? Spirits, I could kiss you!”

“Rescuing you,” Han said warmly, as the two embraced. “What are you doing here? What happened to everyone else?”

“Everyone else captured is in a prison on Coruscant. They singled out yours truly because of what happened with Bespin.” Lando sat down on the mattress. Han joined him. “But how did you get here?”

Han explained his side as quickly as possible. Lando nodded thoughtfully. He looked just as sceptical as Rex had about Jyn. “I know, I know. I mean, I’m happy she rescued the Rebellion, but having her living the next room over? But, and don’t think I’m getting mushy, she’s really committed to keeping me alive and helping us.”

Lando snorted. “No, nobody would accuse Han Solo of having a soft centre, much like a nougat. Okay. So Jyn’s a friend. But I’m not hearing a plan here?”

Han groaned. “If you’ve got any grand ideas, I’d love to hear it.”

“Well,” Lando rubbed his beard, “We’ve got two smuggling geniuses here, so…”

“I see me, now where’s the other one?”

Lando ignored him. “Far as I can see, there’s no way out without the gondola…”

The words echoed over and over in Han’s mind. He grabbed Lando’s shoulder. “Lando, don’t let it get to your fat head, but you _are_ a genius!”

“I try. But what, exactly…”

“Are you thinking?” Rex pressed his head against the handle of his mop. Han wondered if Rex was wishing Old Ben Kenobi was the one here, instead of him. Beside him, an imperious-looking woman with almond eyes, dark hair tied back, and tan skin leant on her own mop. “This _di’kut_ is truly our best hope of getting out of here?” Ursa Wren said, looking down her nose at him. How she managed to still look regal despite wearing years-old prison garb was amazing. Even Lando, also scrubbing the floor, looked a bit shabby.

Han raised his hands. “Hey, not just me -”

“Yes, I’ve met the criminal who attacked Mandalore,” Rex said.

“Oh yeah. Right. Nice to see you again,” Jyn said, avoiding making eye contact with Ursa and Rex. Han pinched the bridge of his nose.

“ _He_ is truly friends with Sabine?”

“We get along great!” Han said, before Rex could interject, “Real respect you know her, being _Mand’alor_ and all that. Love Clan Wren. Love all the other clans. Love the armour and the black sword. Great stuff.”

Ursa glanced over at Rex. “I am never getting out of this prison, am I?”

Rex sighed as they all quickly crouched beneath one of the stair wells. “Let’s circle back to your supposed plan. Your idea is to escape on the gondola? First, how are we going to get past the guards?”

“Two words. Prison riot,” Lando said.

Rex looked even more doubtful. “Fine. Let’s say that works and we make it to the gondola. Second problem, the warden will just the cut line.”

Han extended a triumphant finger. “Not if we take the warden hostage.”

Ursa stared at him. “Oh, you’re _serious_.”

“You’ve been in here what, five years? I’m open to suggestions,” Han said tartly. Rex shook his head, groaning.

Ursa’s eyes narrowed. She sketched out a brief outline of the prison on the grimy floor. “I assume you want to stage the riot in the prison yard, here in the prison centre? It is specifically designed for such outcomes, with multiple external switches to seal off the entire area. We would have to scale the walls to get back into the prison complex.”

“And that’s why you need me,” an overly sweet voice said. Doctor Aphra poked her head over the staircase, grinning. “Trying to avoid me, Fire Lady? You really need to tell me your name -”

“I’d prefer you never speak to me again,” Jyn groaned.

“And who is this delightful creature?” Lando asked, raising Aphra’s hand to kiss.

“Doctor Chelli Lona Aphra. Rogue archaeologist and mechanical expert. Also, champ, not to rain on your parade, but I only love women,” Aphra said easily. Lando released her hand apologetically. “Solo, no hard feelings, for the uh…great snake chomping incident?”

“Cut the crap and explain.”

“I can cut the mechanical systems that control the prison yard doors.” She shrugged. “It’s all hydraulics. But we’re going to need tools.”

“Okay. I can get us that,” Han started. Several guards appeared. He snapped to attention. “Erso. Director Krennic is here to see you.”

Her eyes widened. As she was led away, she glanced back at them and mouthed something. _It has to be now._

Han whipped his head back to the group. “Meet in the yard in one hour. The Doc, Lando and I will get the systems down. Start planning a riot!”  
  


Jyn groaned as she was thrown into a new cell room. She could feel the tenderness of a bruise on her back. Prison reform had better be on Mon Mothma’s docket when they won. She sat up and looked around, seeing only a single chair with multiple restraints. There was a sound from the door.

She glanced up sharply. It was Iden and Ciena, looking haggard and wan and wearing stormtrooper uniforms. “What are you doing here?”

“Krennic,” Iden said, helping Jyn to her feet. “He’s…fuck, Jyn, he’s going to kill you when he gets here. There’s no trial. They’re not bringing you back to Coruscant.”

“Where’s Krennic now? And what is Ciena doing here?” Jyn said. The other woman frowned, folding her arms and looking away. Iden’s eyes slid over to their friend, something like fear crossing her face. “Krennic’s still talking to Ysanne Isard. When I heard you’d been found, we snuck onboard Krennic’s airship.”

“ _Both_ of you?” Jyn could not control how dumbfounded she sounded. Ciena’s eyes were fixed on the wall. She murmured two words. Death Star. Jyn shuddered. She didn’t know whether to scream at Ciena that it had taken watching people be _vaporized_ to change her mind, or to feel a measure of gratitude that she had come. “Wait, why would you do that?”

“To save you, you fool,” Iden said, managing a half-smile. “We were going to defect, but then I heard about you. So. Do you have a plan?”

“I do, and you need to get back onto Krennic’s ship and out of here, quick.” Impulsively, Jyn hugged Iden. “You can help me by getting rid of the guards outside.”

Iden nodded. Ciena said nothing, listening as Iden stepped outside and downed both guards. She glanced over at Jyn. She said quietly, “I swore an oath, and oaths must be kept. But they broke it first. A long time ago. All my life… And then I wanted…”

 _I wanted to give up,_ Jyn finished internally, feeling, of all things, pity, for Ciena.

“Don’t die, Ciena Ree,” Jyn said impulsively, “It would break Iden’s heart.”

Ciena stared at her, cheeks purpling under her dark skin. Jyn shrugged, darting out of the cell. Iden stood over the bodies, and gave her nod that the corridor was clear. She took off.  
  


Han walked quickly through the Fortress towards the prison yard, trying not to look suspicious. Aphra’s tweaks to the system, more of breaking a lot of the hydraulic systems, should work. He had ordered all the cell doors open. Like all bloated bureaucrat institutions, nobody was willing to speak to higher-ups to for authorization. Just the threat of Isard was enough to get the other Purge Troopers to start flicking switches. Prisoners were pouring out. As for Jyn…

He had to hope. Damn him, Cassian Andor really was compelling.

“Now, how are we going to start a prison riot?” Rex demanded, once he caught up to them. Han opened his mouth, then swiftly closed it. Aphra tried ineffectually shoving someone, but the man only sighed and shook his head at her. “I’m out of ideas,” she said, raising her grease-stained hands.

Ursa swore. _“Haar’chak!”_

Dumbfounded, they watched her step into the crowd of mingling prisoners. Ursa smiled sweetly. Then she grabbed the nearest man and hefted him over her shoulders. Snarling the foulest language Han had ever heard, she flung him into the crowd. “Let’s riot!”

The yard had exploded into primal chaos. Fists and fire blazed everywhere. Han saw Isard emerge on one of the watch balconies, yelling orders at the guards, her face growing redder. Perfect. Now they just somehow needed…

“Han!”

Jyn tossed aside a prisoner, running over to them. She didn’t look too roughed up, thankfully. She had a sack slung over her back. “What’s that? I’ve already got your stuff and mine!”

“Tell you later. Where’s Isard?”

Han paused. His eyes went up to the balcony, where Isard stood, back down to them. “We…did not think that far.”

Before tiny Jyn Erso could deck him, Aphra spoke up. “Hey…uh…it looks like the old lady and guy might be taking care of it.”

They whirled around. Rex and Ursa had launched themselves onto the tops of the crowd’s heads. Running atop people’s heads, they leapt several feet into the air. Hands seized the wall. Han’s mouth dropped open. They were _scaling_ the wall without any grips. With a flip, they hooked their feet on a loose pipe. Flipping themselves upwards, they leapt onto a balcony. Guards ran out. Swerving past their fire, both dispatched them with hard _qi_ -blocks. Ursa kicked off the last one’s head.

The momentum carried her up. Scaling up the wall, she flipped onto the upper story. Ursa landed right in front of the warden’s guards. She landed several vicious kicks and strikes. The guards dropped. Isard snarled, punching forward ineffectually. Ursa caught the warden’s fist in one hand. “You wouldn’t dare, savage.”

Ursa struck her shoulder. Isard sagged, paralyzed. Then Ursa punched her directly in the face. “ _Ibic cuyir par Mand’yaim. Ibic cuyir par ner aliit._ ”

She bound her hands and gagged her, tearing off scraps of her prison wear. It took them several minutes to catch up with via the stairs. Rex flipped easily to join them. “I’ll take that, my Lady. Now, let’s get out of here,” Rex said with a smirk, hefting Isard over his shoulder.

“Spirits, I wish I was that fit,” Han panted from the run up the stairs.

“Tell me about it,” Lando commiserated.  
  


The guards allowed them to pass once they saw Isard was their hostage. Any minute now, Jyn knew, they would eventually realise Isard was expendable. Jyn herded everyone on board the gondola, Isard included. At the end of the cables she could see the lip of the volcano, to freedom. The Purge Troopers were starting to close in.

She pushed the control lever down as hard as she could. The winch started to turn. The gondola moved across the boiling lake. Jyn drew back. Then she smashed down on the lever with a devastating kick. The handle shifted a little. Jyn kicked again, and once more. The handle snapped clean off.

The gondola was getting further away. Jyn scrambled backwards. She broke into a run. Fireballs filled the air as she leapt off the platform. For a moment, she free-fell. Then Han’s hand seized hers. She slammed painfully into the side of the gondola. Together, he and Rex dragged her inside. “Now they can’t stop us.”

“You’re still an idiot,” Han snapped, checking her over for bruises. She smiled. “What was even in that sack weighing you down?”

Jyn tossed it onto the floor. Inside were two sets of Mandalorian armour. Ursa and Rex looked startled. “Lifted them from Isard’s storage.”

“ _Vor entye_ ,” they said solemnly. Jyn got the distinct impression they’d entered into some kind of debt with her, so she only nodded awkwardly. It had just been the right thing to do. And it would infuriate Isard, and Jyn was a petty, _petty_ woman.

“And we should be good now, all the Inquisitors are dead or out,” Aphra said, examining the armour with a little too much enthusiasm.

Then Lando yelled, “Wait! Who’s that?”

Jyn scrambled to her feet to look. Standing on the platform was a familiar man in white. Beside him were several Mandalorian _qi_ -blockers. “Not good, not good!”

Krennic made a gesture. The Mandalorians leapt ont the cables. They began to run across the cables. “Cody,” Rex said lowly, “That _dar’manda._ ”

“They’re traitors now,” Ursa said coldly. Jyn had no idea what was being said. Instead she flexed her hands, knuckles popping, as she inhalede, allowing her inner flame to grow. The four opponents landed on the roof with a thud. Jyn, Han, Ursa and Rex climbed up, since Lando was weapon-less. The space was narrow.

Jyn lashed out with firebending and grappling, trying to throw the Mandalorian, or ex-Mandalorian, off the roof. For the first time, she didn't have to grunt or roar to get the flame out. It flowed, following her energy pathways easily. She could hear the others fighting, and tried to keep to her own space. 

Rex was speaking, no pleading, “ _Ni dinu ner gaan naakyc, jorcu ni nu copaani kyr'amur ner vod._ ”

The Mandalorian he'd called Cody laughed bitterly, revealing a woman’s voice. Having four different duels was near impossible in this space. One of them was going to fall off –

She heard Isard’s voice. “Cut the line!” she roared, struggling out of her gag. Lando and Aphra grabbed her, dragging her back from the windows.

The gondola stopped, nearly sending them all over. 

“They’re cutting the line!” Lando shouted.

Another gondola was coming from the opposite end, on a different cable-line. Cody glanced back at Rex. Together, the four Mandalorians flipped onto the other gondola. “ _Ni ceta, vod_ ,” Cody said, in that same bitter, wistful tone.

Rex looked away. “This thing isn’t water-tight!” Lando said as they climbed back into the gondola. She and Han looked at each other, panicked. Think, think.

She heard something. The metallic hiss of a throwing knife. Aphra was staring back at the platform. “Wait, who is _that_?”

Jyn looked. "It's Iden," she breathed, "It's my friend."

She moved fluidly, taking down guards with knives hidden in her belts, her sleeves, the bottom of her boots. Krennic roared, but Iden lashed out her arm. Two knives sent him slamming into the wall, pinning him there. Her path clear, Iden sprinted towards the winch. A metal shard had been jammed into it to keep the line taught. With a kick, Iden broke the shard of metal, sending their gondola lurching forward.

For a moment, her head seemed to turn. Across the boiling lake, their eyes met.

 _Thank you,_ Jyn mouthed.

Then they reached the volcano’s lip. Leaving Isard in the gondola, they ran out towards Krennic’s waiting airship, leaving Iden to her fate.  
  


Iden stared up at Orson Krennic. Two guards held her, her wrists cuffed. Krennic made a gesture, and the guards let go and walked away. The pale man sneered at her, his cape ripped from her knives. This loathsome worm who had killed her people to test his superweapon. Who had signed off on killing her mother’s people in Jedha. Operation: Cinder, the infiltration of the Partisans, the Fire Nation was madness. It had to stop. “If it weren’t for your father, you’d be dead right now,” Krennic bit out. “To think, Garrick Versio’s own daughter, a traitor.”

Iden merely raised an eyebrow. Her father had used her to further his ambitions. His ugly dark-skinned daughter. But Jyn Erso lived. It was more than enough to see the fury on Krennic’s face. “For a scientist, you’re not terribly bright to see it coming,” she said.

“Oh. Am I?” Krennic said, shrugging his shoulders. She heard the air crackle as the lightning began to flicker at his fingertips. Iden closed her eyes, and waited to meet her destiny.

There was a thump. Iden opened her eyes. Ciena, more beautiful than any woman Iden had ever known, stood with her fists extended. She had downed Krennic with two hits. Iden gasped as Ciena grabbed her wrist. “Come on! We have to run!”

But the guards were upon them in an instant. As they were grabbed and cuffed, Krennic got to his feet. Iden smirked at how Ciena had bloodied Krennic’s face. “Lock them up, and let them rot,” he spat.  
  


“Stop stop stop, wait, we’re not the Fire Nation!” Han yelled as he jumped off the airship. Their friends had assembled around the atrium’s fountain, bending and weapons at the ready. Leia looked like he’d hit her over the head at the sight of the Imperial Airship. “So, about that fishing trip.”

“Oh, we know you went to prison to break out Lando,” Leia said, folding her arms and glaring at her. Han gaped, then pointed accusingly at Chewie. Chewie gave a guilty warble. “And it turns out Chewbacca isn’t even a bear? He’s an endangered species called a Wookie?”

“Well,” Han said, a bit at a loss, “But I succeeded!”

Lando stepped out from behind him. Rex joined him. “Lando! Rex!” Luke and Leia yelled, throwing themselves at them. Rex laughed, looking cheered, and Lando kissed their hands and cheeks thoroughly. Chirrut and Baze joined in. Enfys clasped Lando’s forearm in greeting. Cassian merely raised an eyebrow.

“You know me already,” Aphra said, and was thoroughly ignored.

“And this is Lady Ursa Wren, Sabine’s mother.”

“Does she know about -” Han pressed a finger to his lips and Leia fell silent, failing to hide her smirk. “And I didn’t do it alone.”

He reached around and pulled Jyn out of the shadows of the airships. She’d been skulking there, obviously embarrassed. She went pink as he tossed in arm around her shoulders. “I could never have survived without Jyn.”

Jyn looked up at him, stunned. Then, she smiled. “You’re still an ass,” she said fondly.

“Yeah, yeah, you owe me a drink for not falling into a boiling lake,” Han said. Across them, he saw Cassian look between them with a strange expression on his face. He smirked. “And of course, breaking into prison was all my idea.”

“Yes, let’s get back to that – you _broke into a prison?_ ” Leia said, folding her arms and trying to coach her features back into irritation.

“Okay, now before you start yelling -”

_Coda._

Doctor Chelli Lona Aphra raised her hands and searched for escape routes as the dark figure in the cape walked towards her. Team Avatar (what a name, really. Typical Rebel cheesiness), had been so gracious as to drop her and the two Mandalorians off at the nearest Fire Nation island with some coin to get transport into the Earth Kingdom. She would have loved to keep the airship, but flying something that big with just herself wasn't going to happen. The thing would probably be dismantled or stolen back, whichever idiots won the War.

So, freedom! Sana was still mad at her, and Tolvan had run off to join the rebels. Her pets had tried to eat her before she'd gotten rid of them. The Fire Nation had imprisoned her for being involved in a plot to assassinate old Palpatine. Ah, the perils of archaeology.

As Vader raised a glowing fist, she thought fast. "Wait, wait, wait! Lord Vader, I have a proposition for you!"

"No more of your trickery -"

"I know where they are! I know where Luke and Leia Skywalker are!"

Vader paused.

  
It was a small mercy they’d been imprisoned together. Perhaps a bigger mercy that Krennic hadn’t executed them. Iden wondered vaguely if her father would come and get her. Ciena had been quiet the entire time as they shucked on the scratchy prison garb. Iden mourned the loss of her weaponry. She felt the cool air flow beneath the tunic and trousers, brushing against her bare skin. They lay down on their mattresses, facing each other. Iden reached back and unpinned her bun, letting her dark hair fall around her face.

Ciena’s eyes focused on her face. For the first time, they were alone. No Fire Nation, no rebels, no honour or duty. No conflicting loyalties between the place they’d been born, and the blood ties to another, that they wore on their faces, their histories.

And it had come at such a price.

“Why did you do it? You could’ve gone free,” Iden whispered.

Ciena’s hand shook. But her touch was steady as she traced Iden’s cheekbone. “I’m nothing to them,” she said, “Truly nothing. No matter what debts I honour for giving me food and a new life, I am nothing. If I had been born elsewhere, I would be less than nothing. They have no honour – I only wanted their respect.”

She swallowed, brushing her thumb against Iden’s lips. “And I could have never let you die,” Ciena breathed.

Iden leant into her touch, into the warmth of her breath. “But why?”

Ciena’s long eyelashes fluttered. “I know now what has always been right in front of me.”

And then Ciena’s lips were on hers, soft and warm. Iden groaned. “Do you know how fucking long I’ve been waiting for you to say that? I didn’t think you even liked women!”

“Sorry,” Ciena laughed, drawing back for a second, “To be fair, I only started realising that when Jyn arrived.”

Iden laughed, pulling her towards her again. Her hands grazed the back of Ciena’s neck, feeling the base of her impossibly soft hair. She traced her fingers across the baby hairs Ciena always styled with pomade. Ciena’s hands drifted down to the front of her tunic, pressing against Iden’s heart, as they kissed and kissed and kissed, and were finally free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Mando'a translations (based off an online translator I used):  
> di'kut - idiot  
> Haar’chak - damnit  
> Ibic cuyir par Mand’yaim. Ibic cuyir par ner aliit. - this is for Mandalore. this is for my family.  
> Vor entye - thank you  
> dar’manda - "a state of being "not Mandalorian"; not an outsider, but one who has lost his heritage, and so his identity and soul"  
> Ni dinu ner gaan naakyc, jorcu ni nu copaani kyr'amur ner vod. - Honor my offer of truce, for I would not willingly shed my brother's blood.  
> Ni ceta, vod - I'm sorry, brother
> 
> 2) Ysanne Isard is a ridiculous villain from the 1990s X-Wing novels. She's got one red eye and one blue eye because she's "cold as ice" but also has fiery temper. She has a clone of herself! She's a silly, schlocky Flash Gordon villain, because sometimes you gotta remember that Star Wars is a schlocky, silly, Flash Gordon rip-off too! 
> 
> I've also posted a interlude chapter about best girl Enfys. Otherwise, next chapter - we finally have Jyn and Cassian team-up for their life-changing fieldtrip.


	41. Interlude: Reincarnation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An interlude as Enfys figures out her future, and some plot threads are resolved. 
> 
> As music, have [Heart Chakra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEASoIS1XZ8), one of the most beautiful pieces about being able to let go of our grief and find that lost love can be reborn in new places. Really, everything after 0:15 moves me.
> 
> Content warning: Enfys makes a reference to oral sex/the clitoris.

Enfys slept and dreamt of a small scrap of desert called Jendorn. She and some of the Cloudriders had encountered it once. A place of a desert Spirit, they had been told. It shows impressions of the past in the sand.

 _Why?_ She had asked.

_Who can say? Perhaps to remind us that underneath your skin is who you were at fifteen, twelve, eight –_

The sand shifts and reforms itself into a small dark child cradled in the arms of her mother and aunts and grandaunts and cousins. A long fall from space, and the endless attacks on the conveys that cut their tongues and sold them into slavery. In the sand, four strangers appear. They extend their hands towards her.

The sand girl pauses before she goes. She turns and removes her helmet. The sand forms her features, shards of glass glinting as her freckles. This ghost of her raises a hand.

Enfys raises her hand, then frowns.

The Western Air City was a thing of beauty. In the early morning light, the tapestries and carvings seemed to glow. Enfys soared through the hanging spires of the different buildings. Only an airbender could see the City from this angle. This crumbling monument to the genius of a potentially waning people.

She was surprised to find Lando Calrissian waiting for her when she dropped down into a secluded landing pad. They’d scrounged up some dusty clothes in the rubble, washed and re-sewn it, and he looked resplendent again. There was something in seeing one of her own here. Something the pale-faces and other peoples could never entirely understand. Even though they stood in wreckage and horror.

“Hey, sister. You know, I knew the Head Mother, way back in the day,” Lando said conversationally. “Forsynthia Jin and her daughter Rinetta. Pulled a little heist for them.”

“Now why is every Air Nomad we’ve met a criminal?” Enfys said, managing a small smile as she unclipped her helmet.

Lando clutched his chest in mock horror. “You wound me, my lady.” He sobered. “When Hynestia fell, there were rumours, Rinetta led some of her people to safety. People escaped. They got out.”

Enfys was silent. Lando clucked his tongue. “Kid, you’re, you know, a kid. You’re not the Air Nomad saviour.”

She frowned. “I’m not a child. I’m not ‘kid’. Do not patronize me.”

Lando paused, contrite. “Okay, sorry. I won’t call you that. But you are taking this -”

“I have a great destiny,” she broke out, “I am the only one who for some reason, the Spirits said was meant to be here! I don’t know what that _means_!”

Enfys hated how fragile her voice sounded. She spun, flicking her glider open again and clipping on her helmet. As she took flight, she heard a tear hit the metal interior of her helmet.

_Ping._

She’d thought herself brave. She had been the leader of her Tribe. “You must be your own wings,” her mother had always said, “You must find your way back. Remember who you are, Enfys.”

Why had she been placed by the Avatar’s side?

The ghosts of her people caressed her cheeks. _You must not live only for us,_ they whispered.

But how? Enfys asked. How can I not?  
  


She liked to sit in the temples and shrines after training, staring up at the statues. Today she prayed to Kreia, Spirit of Lost Things. In the dust, she traced Kreia’s symbol, a kneeling woman with three swords spiraling around her head, like a North Star. Kreia was an Earth Kingdom Spirit, worshipped once in the pyramids of Malachor, but her dying practice had grown close to the Cloudriders.

She rocked back on her heels and stared at her drawing.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

She glanced up to see Luke leaning against the temple entrance, the sunset gleaming on his dirty blond hair. He walked over, standing close behind her. His foots echoed. “Who is that?”

“An Earth Spirit,” Enfys said, resting her elbows on her knees, “Maybe that’s why she’s never answered back. She doesn’t belong to me.”

“Spirits don’t belong to people,” Luke said. He sat down next to her in the dust. “And I’d know. Bridge between Spirits and people, remember?”

Enfys mirrored his smile, but it didn’t fully reach her eyes. “I guess it’s just odd that we chose to pray to her.”

Luke cocked his head and studied her face. “It’s not odd to me. You’re nomads. It makes sense you would take something of the places you’ve been.”

Enfys looked over at him. This settler boy from Tatooine. She trailed her hands in the dust, impulsively destroying the drawing. Luke touched her hands. “Tell me more about the Cloudriders. Tell me more about your people.”

He was trying to distract her. But Enfys was willing to go along with the charade. So she talked and talked: about festivals, and food, and songs. Eventually, she started to really get into it.

By the evening, she had roped Lando into demonstrating an Air Nomad dance. There was no music, but they did the best they could, Lando laughing and smirking and definitely flirting, and turning half their audience’s ears pink. “I think I’d break my spine trying to move my hips like that,” Leia said. Enfys laughed, kissing Lando on the cheek in thanks.

As the night wound down, she and Luke sat side by side, legs dangling over the edge of the atrium. “There’s one thing I’ve been wondering,” he said. _When will the war end and I can kiss you but you’re not of my people and I –_ “Don’t you have a father?”

Enfys stared at him. She burst into laughter once more. “I mean, there was obviously a man who did _something_ for two minutes, Luke,” she said teasingly, “But you mean – Air Nomad culture is matrilineal. After all, my Mumma did all that growing for _nine months_ ,” she emphasized, “I am my mother’s blood. I popped out of her! We are raised by mothers and sisters and aunts and all.”

Luke seemed to turn that over in his head. “So, there is no marriage?”

Enfys shook her head, appalled. “No! No bartering of women for a sum to then be owned. Women are free to lie with whomever they choose, however many they want through their lives. Of course, people may remain committed together, if they want. That man chose not to stay. It's not sad, don't look so troubled!”

Luke frowned. “But then… wouldn’t there be a problem?” Enfys looked confused. “With so many babies?”

This time she laughed so hard she nearly started tearing up. When she smiled again, it was sly. Luke’s ears went pink. “Oh, Luke, you know, there’s something that makes women feel _very_ good that won’t have that little problem.”

She told him.

Luke smiled wickedly right back. “Well, I am a fast learner,” and this time it was Enfys flushing.

People can learn, she thought later, people can change.  
  


For the next three days, Jyn would come down to breakfast with large circles under her eyes. She waved off Luke and Leia’s concern, drilling them just as hard as she always did (out of the four teachers the twins had had, Jyn was definitely the biggest taskmaster). Enfys noticed that Cassian kept discreetly making sure she was well, and bit back a smile at their silliness.

Then, one morning, Jyn grabbed her hand before she could leave to wander, having no scheduled training with the twins. “It’s your turn for a life-changing field trip.”

“Excuse me?” She allowed Jyn to lead her towards the staircase. “Don’t you have training with Luke and Leia today?”

“I swapped with Cassian,” Jyn said, a mischievous smirk on her face, “Now they have full-day firebending with me tomorrow.”

Baffled, Enfys followed Jyn out of the City. To her surprise, Chirrut was waiting there as well. Soon, they were in the tall grasses of Kef Bir, high as Enfys’ waist. In the distance, the sound of the crashing surf. The sky overhead was perfect blue of summer, no clouds in sight. Enfys itched to take flight. Crest over the horizon and disappear into the cool embrace of the sky. She saw two yellow-billed hornbills flying overhead. _Umkolwana_ , in one of their tongues, believer, carrier of faith.

Her element sang. She exhaled, centering herself. “Where are we going?”

“When Han and I dropped Rex, Aphra and Ursa off at the next island, I found there’s a valley on the other end of this island,” Jyn said, “It’s a long walk, warning you.”

“We’re going on a fieldtrip,” Enfys said slowly, “To see a valley?”

Jyn turned her head and looked at her. Suddenly, Enfys saw how frightened Jyn looked. She is doing this for me, she thought. She is reaching back, and taking my hand. “Just, trust me?” Jyn asked.

They reached the valley of Ruusan by the late afternoon. Green grasses grew out of the rich brown soil on either side of the gulf. Someone had earthbent statues overlooking the valley. She felt _something_ here. Spirits. Enfys walked, awed, towards one of the monoliths. And then she recognized what they were. “They’re the Fire Nation and Air Nomad Avatar’s,” she whispered. Fire, air and earth, all together.

There was a dark stream separating them from the centre of the valley. Enfys pulled off her cape, tunic, and shirt, rolling her trousers up. Jyn and Chirrut similarly shed. They waded through the dark waters, droplets dripping from their clothes and skin. Jyn held tight to Chirrut’s hand, making sure he was alright.

Enfys shook aside the droplets sparkling across the freckles on her tan skin. Impulsively, she ducked under for a moment. She heard the water pounding against her temples, surrounding her and holding her tight. When she emerged, water dripped down the sides of her nose and dripped onto the surface of the water. She blinked away drops from her eyelashes. Her red hair had gotten wet. It was going to be a problem when she got back, as her natural hair would absorb the salt. Lots of moisturizing, de-tangling, and clarifying awaited.

But she had wanted to step into the dark uterine water, called to this strange place filled with light.

From the shore, Jyn extended her hand. “Come on,” she said softly, “There are people waiting to meet you.”

Enfys accepted it, and followed.  
  


The first thing she heard was the bellow of a sky bison. Impossible. The bison from the Western Temple, with their shaggy cream fur and hexagonal stripes, different from her Tribe’s Southern species with horizontal stripes, were extinct. They had all been killed when Hynestia fell.

And then she saw them.

They flew around the Fire Nation village, fed by pale faces. These villagers wore a simple plate armour, their hair braided. The air was alive with the bison’s happy calls, the laughter of the people below. She saw Chirrut raise a hand, searching in the air. The bison leaned forward, licking his short hair. Chirrut’s hand found it, and stroked its soft fur. Some of the lines on the old monk’s face seemed to slide away. “Hello there,” he said gently.

A pale elderly woman approached them. She bowed fluidly, her face taking on an awestruck quality at the sight of her. “Lady Enfys, I am Thracia Cho Leem,” she said in Basic, “This is the Valley of Sages. Your friend Jyn has told us much about you.”

“How?” Enfys whispered, unable to tear her eyes away from the sight. The old woman beckoned. The trio followed her until they reached a wooden temple. A fire burned in the brazier. At the front was a gold-foil statue, inlaid with kyber. At first, Enfys could not recognize it. Then she gasped.

It was Avatar Revan, without her mask. She saw a hard face, a strong jaw, long nose, and frowning lips, with short-cropped hair. She was a handsome woman. Hardly anyone knew what Avatar Revan had looked like, the Avatar refusing to remove her mask in public. Across the temple walls were paintings depicting Revan’s fight against mortal and Spirits alike, the bloody aftermath of the Mandalorian Wars. She saw an Earth Kingdom woman in a yellow tunic, her dark brown hair pulled back. The woman was touching Revan’s unmasked face. In the paintings, their faces drew closer and closer, and at last, they kiss. Bastila Shan, Enfys knew from the stories. Revan’s lover, lost to the Lord of Hunger.

There were other statues of other Fire Avatars. They all looked new, as though someone had built this temple fairly recently.

“My Lady, we are the Jensaarai, the truth-seekers. When the War began, we split from the Fire Sages, believing their teachings corrupt. We journeyed North and made friends with Air Nomads here, creating our temple here,” Thracia explained.

Enfys frowned, but nodded. She did not think she would understand such fervent religiosity. “So, you did nothing when Hynestia was sacked?”

“No, my Lady.” Thracia continued, “We are loyal only to the Avatar and the Spirits. When Hynestia fell, we were able to help the Air Nomad refugees on their way, and tend to your people’s beloved bison until you may return, and until one day we may return to our homeland and restore the Fire Sages.”

She bowed her head. “It is the least we could do after Lady Forsynthia granted us safe harbours.”

“Oh,” Enfys managed. There was a lump in her throat. She stepped from the temple and into the courtyard. A bison nuzzled her hand, gently.

Enfys sobbed.

She pressed her face against its side and breathed in the soft warm fur. The bison rumbled, licking her cheek and getting slobber in her hair. “Oh, sweet thing,” she murmured, “This is your home now, too, isn’t it?”

Then she felt hands on her shoulders, her cheeks.

The Jensaarai were staring at her, speaking a word over and over. She glanced at Jyn. “What are they saying?” she asked, not knowing the Fire Nation tongues.

Jyn frowned. “Um, well, it’s weird, and they keep saying a name… _Bastila?_ Sorry, I'm not so good with my Fire Nation history.”

"No, I get it," she murmured, waving Jyn aside. Enfys stared at the awestruck crowd. Surely not. A great destiny. She thought of the way Luke had told her, _“I knew you before I met you.”_

Surely, it could not have been so simple. So kind, and open-ended.

Someone touched her shoulder. It was Chirrut. His eyes were filled with tears. “Do not despair,” he told her, “For love does not depend on space and time. The Cloudriders and your mother, the Western Air Nomads, Revan and Bastila, all of us, none of them will ever leave you. There is something more powerful than death or duty, stronger than rage and passion. The key to hold the darkness back.”

She looked at this village in the Ruusan Valley, a place that had once born great chaos a thousand years ago, and knew the answer. She grasped Chirrut’s hand. Then, she reached out and caught Jyn’s, squeezing it tight. Jyn’s eyes widened.

“Hope,” Enfys whispered.

She grinned at Chirrut. “And don’t think I don’t know that’s from the song of The Cave of the Two Lovers.”

He laughed. “And have love stories ever spoken wrongly?”  
  


As they walked back towards the Western Air City, Enfys caught Jyn’s arm in hers, pulling her forward and hugging her tight. “Thank you, Jyn,” she said.

Jyn smiled shyly when they pulled apart. “I just can’t believe it. I would never think the sky bison would trust them.”

“Do you know how I learnt to metal-bend?” Chirrut said.

Jyn frowned. "You can bend metal?"

"You've missed a lot!" Chirrut laughed, patting her back, "There are little bits of earth within metal. The greatest illusion, is the illusion of separation. All it requires is to open your senses, and it moves.”

Enfys squeezed Jyn’s hand. She turned her face towards the sky. In the dying light, two yellow-billed hornbills flew overhead. _Umkolwana_. Their great wings carved through the sky. “I think they've been following us," Jyn said. "That's...weird, isn't it?"

"Perhaps they are not birds," Chirrut said, "Maybe they also know us from another life."

Enfys studied her friend's face for a moment.

"To the Air Nomads,” she said tenderly, “They say that after you have lived seven lifetimes, you are reincarnated as a bird, and become free.”

"They're not Air Nomads," Jyn said. "And they..."

"Spirits don't belong to anyone," Enfys whispered.

Wind whipped their hair. There were tears in Jyn’s eyes. She thought she saw her mouth shape a word. _Goodbye_.

Then she clasped Enfys’ hand and said, “Fly.”

And Enfys took flight, and laughed, and laughed, as she had not done since she was a child.  
  


As they walked back through Hynestia, they found the group lounging around the fountain. They seemed to be taking a break from sparring, with Luke standing at the edge of the fountain, trying to wring water out of his shirt. Cassian and Leia sat next to him, Leia occasionally splashing them. Baze, Han, and Lando were talking shop about their weapons, Baze raising a hand when he saw them.

“They must have removed the bodies,” Enfys said suddenly, the conclusion dawning on her.

Jyn looked sideways at her. “And the sky bison followed. What if…what if they don’t leave there?”

Enfys looked at the group as Chirrut and Baze laughed over something. “You know, Jyn,” she said, “I’m finding that a person can have many homes.”

Jyn blinked, startled. Enfys smiled and kissed her cheek. She walked towards Luke.

His blue eyes, blue as the sky, widened when he saw her flushed cheeks and wet hair. “How was the fieldtrip?” he asked, giving her one of his easy smiles. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Yes,” she said, “I am. I know, now.”

“Know what?”

“What my destiny is.”

She looked around at her family, taking them in each in turn. Then she stepped forward, and touched his cheek, seeking an answer. Luke nodded, sucking in a deep, uncertain breath.

“It’s to live,” she breathed, and kissed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Jendron comes from the book Alphabet Squadron (Alexander Freed), one of my favourite Star Wars books on the aftermath of war, redemption, and change. 
> 
> 2) Kreia is Darth Traya that the twins briefly saw in the Spirit World way back in Book One!
> 
> 3) I picture Revan as looking like short-hair Lena Headey in those amazing photoshoots of her in a suit. Google "Lena Headey suit" and look respectfully.


End file.
